The
Toronto Maple Leafs celebrated a birthday on Friday. It was 87 years
ago this month that the team adopted the grammatically curious Maple
Leafs name and donned the first jersey to bear a version of the iconic
team logo.
That the Leafs exist at all is a tribute to Conn Smythe, who rescued
the beleaguered NHL team from a possible move to Montreal or
Philadelphia.
"The intention is to get the Toronto public interested in the team as
much as possible and to make the team a Toronto aggregation with some
home-town pride," The Toronto Star wrote of the move. "The new
owners have the proper sporting spirit and are determined to get a team
that will hold its own with the best in the league."
The
years following the end of the first world war hadn't been kind to the
Toronto Arenas, the precursor to the St. Patricks. In 1918, under
manager Charlie Querrie, a legal dispute forced the sale of several star
players, resulting in a five-win season that's still the worst in team
history.
Querrie organized a group of investors and bought the team. In 1922,
the newly named St. Patricks took the first ever NHL title but,
bizarrely, did not have their name engraved on the Stanley Cup - it
would have be added 25 years later in 1948. The brief success didn't
last and a further legal dispute with a former owner forced Querrie to
put the team up for sale again in 1927.
A group from Philadelphia bid $200,000 for the franchise, $40,000
more than the highest local offer, and looked set to claim the St. Pats.
Luckily, Querrie was "loath to see the franchise and players leave
Toronto" and a group of businessmen from Toronto led by Conn Smythe
convinced him to sell to them instead.
"The name 'St. Pats' has been discarded and in the future it will be the 'Maple Leafs' of Toronto," the Star declared following the announcement of the sale on Valentines Day 1927.
Toronto
already had a Maple Leafs in the form of a Double-A baseball team that
played out of a ball park at Bathurst and Lake Shore. Before that, the
original Leafs had a stadium at Hanlan's Point, where a young Babe Ruth
hit his first professional home run in 1914.
The origin of the Maple Leafs name, which at first glance seems like
it should be "Maple Leaves," isn't entirely clear. The official story
goes that the team was named for the Maple Leaf Regiment of the Canadian
army, but there's some suggestion the title was a tribute to yet
another Maple Leafs team for whom Conn Smythe worked as a scout.
In his book Centre Ice: The Smythe Family, the Gardens and the Toronto Maple Leafs Hockey Club,
Smythe's grandson Thomas Stafford Smythe said the team was named for
the insignia his grandfather, a decorated veteran, wore on his uniform
during the war.
The Leafs beat the New York Rangers 4-1 in their first game, snapping
a lengthy losing streak. "Has the jinx gone?" wrote sports writer Bob
Hayes in the Star. "Last night's game was one of the best, if not the best, of the season."
The club wore a white jersey with a green logo for the remainder of
the season, switching to the familiar blue and white in 1927-28.
The transformation was complete.
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