Toronto Maple Leafs’ William Nylander during second period NHL hockey action against the Vancouver Canucks in Toronto earlier this month.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
Remember when the Toronto Maple Leafs were likeable? Yeah, me neither.
Being likeable is a professional athlete’s primary job. Either that, or being unlikeable in an interesting way. The Leafs are neither.
A lot of pros either don’t get this or rebel against it because their working life spans are so short. You’ve spent 15 or 20 years being judged entirely on your physical ability, but once you reach highest level, all of a sudden you have to be charming, too.
Many don’t have enough time to adapt to this reality. By the time they’re starting to mellow out and appreciate the little things, they’re retired.
Some teams and leagues are good at manufacturing likeable employees. I can think of few who are worse at it than the Leafs.
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We saw it last Friday when Mitch Marner returned and was booed up and down the ice until people ran out of steam. A few of the Richie Riches in the lower bowl tried to clap through the pain, but the people up in the (not really) cheap seats weren’t having it. They didn’t like Marner when he was here, and they like him even less now that he’s gone.
Unlike every other notable Leaf, Marner is from Toronto. He’s an undeniably good player. All he had to do to get by was smile and be agreeable. Instead, every time he opened his mouth your overriding thought was, “Imagine spending four hours in a car with this guy.”
Vegas Golden Knights winger Mitch Marner waves to the crowd after a tribute video while playing against the Maple Leafs in Toronto on Friday.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Were I in charge of the Leafs, that reaction would have given me pause. The whole point of running a circus is that people enjoy your clowns. Instead, the Leafs decided to make it worse.
On Sunday, they got their hats handed to them by the Colorado Avalanche. At one point, cameras swung up to the box where the injured players sit in their civvies. They all knew they were on TV. Most had the sense to look grim. William Nylander flashed his most irritated smirk and gave the camera the finger.
Who, I wonder, did he mean to direct that gesture toward? The fans watching at home, who buy his jerseys and pay his salary to do a job that has no actual purpose? The homer broadcasters who’ve been pumping his tires for a decade in return for zero big results? Or his critics, who may not rate him, but drive up his market value and boost his status?
Everybody who was watching that game live is putting money in Nylander’s pocket. Most would have been Leafs’ true believers. And his reaction to being observed by them is a casual “screw you.”
I’m not sure which was better chosen to signal a sort of John Hughesian high-school-villain level of pomposity – the gesture itself, or the smile.
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Whatever it is, I cannot think of a better semiotic representation of the Maple Leafs’ relationship with the city of Toronto. They don’t work on behalf of their admirers. They suffer to abide them. Sometimes, they must sit around the locker room going, “All this, and for what? Ten, 12 million? It’s hardly worth it.”
Nylander later apologized, and even that was unlikeable.
“Sorry about my moment of frustration today! didn’t mean to upset anyone,” he posted on social media, in part.
Really oozing sincerity there. Someone get a mop. It’s dripping all over the place.
If these incidents were exceptions rather than the rule, this wouldn’t matter. People like their pros with a little bite.
But with the Leafs, this is all you get. They’re either mumbling blank-faced through some tedious script, or the mask drops for a second and they’re snarling.
None of them has any sense of fun. The few who might are discouraged from showing it around the others. Eventually, they all become brittle and paranoid. No number of cheesy gambling ads can solve that marketing problem.
Hockey players elsewhere are likeable. The Jays and Raptors can be fun. This is a Toronto hockey problem, rather than a Toronto problem or a hockey problem.
Of the many strange things about the Leafs, the strangest is that the club has turned every natural advantage into a string of insurmountable obstacles. They are the most glamorous club in the sport. There is no end of money and forgiveness here. And that’s why the players hate it so much.
That must be the case, since no one wants to join up. Nobody with any pull has ever agitated to be moved to the Leafs. Every once in a while, some star will say, “I almost went to Toronto,” but no one “almost” chooses the L.A. Dodgers. They just choose them.
However, once they’re here, these refuseniks get stuck in like miserable ticks. Five Leafs have no-trade clauses. A half-dozen more have limited no-movement clauses.
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If I got snookered into joining the Leafs, I’d make sure I got a must-trade clause. Lose two first-round playoff series in a row? Then I must be immediately swapped with a team in California. Whichever one is winning at the time.
After a few months spent adjusting to life as a nobody in Nevada, even Marner seemed to be basking in the hometown attention, negative though it was.
The Leafs are the Hotel California of sports teams. You can check out, but you never leave.
I have no idea how it got this way or how you fix it, but it’s the root cause of the Leafs’ inability to perform.
It’s not that they’re not good enough. It’s that they hate going to work. They hate the people they see at work. But the perks are so good and the job has so few expectations of them that they will do anything to avoid finding new work. They’d prefer to stay here forever, feeling sorry for themselves.