{"id":87073,"date":"2025-06-23T11:42:28","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T11:42:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/87073\/"},"modified":"2025-06-23T11:42:28","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T11:42:28","slug":"toronto-maple-leafs-history-notable-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/87073\/","title":{"rendered":"Toronto Maple Leafs | History & Notable Players"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toronto Maple Leafs, Canadian professional ice hockey<\/a> team based in Toronto<\/a> that plays in the Eastern Conference<\/a> of the National Hockey League<\/a> (NHL). The Maple Leafs have one of hockey\u2019s most-storied pasts, having won the Stanley Cup<\/a> 13 times.<\/p>\n

The Maple Leafs were one of the NHL\u2019s founding teams in 1917 and were first known as the Toronto Arenas before taking on the name St. Patricks in 1919. The team won two Stanley Cups in the NHL\u2019s first five years (in the 1917\u201318 and 1921\u201322 seasons). In 1927 the team was purchased by Conn Smythe<\/a> and renamed the Maple Leafs (often shortened to \u201cthe Leafs\u201d by fans and media). Toronto won the Stanley Cup in the 1931\u201332 season behind the \u201cKid Line,\u201d which featured three future Hockey Hall of Fame members\u2014Charlie Conacher, Busher Jackson, and Joe Primeau\u2014all under age 26.<\/p>\n

Between 1932\u201333 and 1939\u201340 the Leafs appeared in six Stanley Cup finals but lost each time. The team broke through and captured a championship in 1941\u201342, which was the first of five titles under coach Hap Day, who had previously starred on the team for 13 seasons. In 1942 Toronto added centre Ted Kennedy<\/a>, who led the team to the final four of Day\u2019s titles as well as another in 1950\u201351. A rebuilt Maple Leafs team led by head coach Punch Imlach and packed with future Hall of Famers (right wing and centre George Armstrong, goaltender Johnny Bower, centre Red Kelly, centre Dave Keon, defenseman Tim Horton<\/a>, left wing Frank Mahovlich, left wing Bob Pulford, and defenseman Allan Stanley) won three Stanley Cups in a row from 1961\u201362 to 1963\u201364 and one more during the 1966\u201367 season.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Serena<\/p>\n

Britannica Quiz<\/p>\n

Great Moments in Sports Quiz<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

In the 1970s the Leafs dealt with their first prolonged bout of futility, as that decade was the first in which the team failed to capture a title, despite the All-Star play of centre Darryl Sittler and defenseman B\u00f6rje Salming for most of that time. In the following decade, Toronto fell farther from contention<\/a>, finishing no higher than third in its division and never getting past the second round of the playoffs over the course of the 1980s. In 1994 the Leafs acquired future franchise scoring leader Mats Sundin, who led the team to its first division title in 37 years during the 1999\u20132000 season; however, sustained playoff success continued to elude the franchise, which never advanced past the conference finals over Sundin\u2019s 13 seasons in Toronto.<\/p>\n

Following a franchise-record seven-year postseason drought, the Maple Leafs returned to the playoffs in 2012\u201313 only to extend the misery of the team\u2019s tortured fan base by losing the deciding seventh game of its opening series in overtime after leading the Boston Bruins<\/a> 4\u20131 midway through the final period. Toronto then entered into a rebuilding period that resulted in a young Maple Leafs team unexpectedly qualifying for the playoffs in 2016\u201317 (a first-round loss to the top-seeded Washington Capitals<\/a> in which five of the six games went into overtime), one season after the franchise posted the worst record in the NHL. The Maple Leafs became a regular postseason fixture in the following years but failed to advance past the first round of the playoffs during that period.<\/p>\n

Despite the team\u2019s later lack of success, the Maple Leafs routinely rank at the top of the NHL in attendance<\/a>, owing to the fervour of Toronto hockey fans as well as the team\u2019s long-established series of rivalries. The bitterest of those feuds is with the Montreal Canadiens<\/a>, which plays on tensions between Quebec and Ontario<\/a> (and those between English-speaking Canadians and French-speaking Canadians) and is considered by many to be the greatest rivalry in hockey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Toronto Maple Leafs, Canadian professional ice hockey team based in Toronto that plays in the Eastern Conference of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5106],"tags":[301,5213,5212,5211,5,20,5172,4,66,31,5171],"class_list":{"0":"post-87073","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-maple-leafs","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-britannica","10":"tag-encyclopeadia","11":"tag-encyclopedia","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-maple-leafs","14":"tag-mapleleafs","15":"tag-nhl","16":"tag-toronto","17":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs","18":"tag-torontomapleleafs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/114732501772986341","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}