LEAFS HOME-ILIATION DOESN’T BODE WELL FOR STANLEY CUP’S VISIT TO MUSKOKA AGAIN THIS SUMMER
Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
MUSKOKA — Don’t look for Justin Bieber at a Cup party in Walker’s Point this summer.
Muskoka’s most famous summer pop star won’t be visiting his Mitch Marner’s Gravenhurst cottage to hoist Stanley for a taste of NHL victory.
Not after last night’s home-iliation.
Who knows which of the Panthers, Hurricanes, Oilers or Stars have Muskoka connections that would see them bring the heavy hardware here for the traditional day’s player visit. It’s happened before.
A long shot is if a friend of the Leafs scrimmages with them again in Bracebridge in a private rental July and August and sports their championship ring.
Connor McDavid is still a possibility if he returns to the Muskoka Lakes island where he wed last summer.
I remember last September when the Leafs held an open training camp practice at the new rink there.
I asked John Tavares during a public autograph session if he and team were ready for this season and if they were going to win.
“You bet we are,” he said enthusiastically reaching between outstretched hands to sign autographs.
The year before in Gravenhurst he seemed forgotten tagging along behind Auston Matthews entering camp in Gravenhurst. Or was that having his back as he did so well to last night’s end. That was before they traded the captaincy for the alternate.
While for the most part these playoffs they played well together, their game best wasn’t what desperate fans wanted.
I feel sorry for many Leafs lovers, like the young woman I spoke to at Shoppers an hour before puck drop Sunday.
She so wanted to get home to watch before the store closed at 10 p.m.
She’s a Marner fan and hoped to catch the third period — or maybe overtime.
Her heart was broken when she rushed to tune in.
An effervescent fan, she had better get used to this team’s heart-brake.
I’m maybe 50 years older than her and I my dad took me to Leafs games in the 1960s when there were only six NHL teams. And I saw them on TV win their last Cup Canada’s Centennial year. O’ Canada!
Eight years after their last Cup I swept up after the Leafs doing custodial gigs while studying journalism at Ryerson.
Since then I’ve covered the Leafs as a reporter and editor. The same with the Edmonton Oilers.
Jaded as reporters like I am, it’s hard not to wish for one more championship parade.
The closest was hoisting the Cup when Brad May flew it in to the Lake Joe Club for a party.
I thought maybe local star Kris King would bring it a few years ago. Alas he didn’t. He was a Maple Leaf a couple years. Though I think there were a few rings at his summer school. Not even Eric Lindros.
Promises made, promises not kept
As if last year’s gut-wrenching let-down wasn’t bad enough. Hopes were high for four core and more a spring later.
Take it from an ex-Leaf goalie, CBC/SN commentator Kelly Hrudey. Not again, he said.
“They’ve been saying and promising the same thing every year.”
He’d like to see wholesale changes, in a post-mortem minutes later. Clearly he knows of what he speaks.
Armchair quarterbacks are legion.
I remember in the New York Yankees dressing room when a reporter asked Reggie Jackson how it seemed he could have missed a fly ball.
“You’re sitting up in the press box and you look down and think I can catch it. You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he cussed.
It’s easy to second-guess the fastest game on earth. Until you’re in the heat of the moment.
And what heat there was. Again a scowling Marner was captured at the centre of it scowling at his team-mates again this year.
Even coach Craig Berube, a hard ass player, was cursing his players.
That’s the passion fans expect of their stars and what they need to win consistently through four rounds.
A first division win in 25 years, an advance to the second round and a 7-game loss to the Stanley Cup champions isn’t good enough for most.
The top team this season, the Winnipeg Jets are out. Alexander Ovechkin, the best player, and his Washington Capitals are out.
There are lots of what ifs today.
Like, with Anthony Stolarz back on the bench, why didn’t Berube shake his team up — when they were down 3-0 in the second period or later — by sending him in net for Joseph Woll?
If the Sens slayer was healthy enough to be in the line-up, he should have gone in.
It did seem as though there were no lines at the end as players were mixed up in any combination of forwards and defence that could jump over the boards (once getting caught for too many men on the ice).
And when fans are fixated on Max Domi and Max Pacioretty (a former Habs captain) to lead the scoring, you know your team is in trouble.
No wonder leather-lunged fans were singing the blues and shouting “boo!”
It’s a good thing for them there are still fans like that young woman in Shoppers.
Because if(?) they ever to win and bring the Cup here to their summer home in Muskoka, there may be none of us alive who remembers them winning in 1967.
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