People who live in Toronto knows that there are only two seasons. Hockey and Construction. During the former, the Toronto Maple Leafs is the team that is beloved above any other team in any other sport. The fans of this team will stick with them through thick and thin while always selling out the Air Canada Centre for every game. The cause of this is history. As an original six team the Leafs have had many successes and many hardships throughout it?s years. But the tradition lives within the hearts of Leaf fans and will forever be passed on from generation to generation. However, once one leaves the Greater Toronto Area, the feelings about the team quickly sours. Throughout the rest of the league, and especially Canada, most hockey fans cannot stand the Toronto Maple Leafs and root for them to fail more than any other team. Now one might ask why this is? What makes the Leafs different from the other 29 teams in the league? The only answer for this is that they do not really hate the Toronto Maple Leafs that much, it?s the fans which they cannot stand. By cheering for the Leafs to fail, it causes misery to Leaf fans while joy to the rest of the league and has been like this for many years. In the beginning, of the original six teams, only two were situated in Canada. They were the aforementioned Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens. Ever since the league?s inception, they have been part of the greatest rivalry in hockey. Montreal, usually consisting of French-Canadian players would have the French-Canadian fan base all to themselves, which consisted of Quebec and parts Eastern Canada. The Leafs on the other hand, as the only English speaking Canadian team would have most of the rest of Canada cheering for them. At the time there was some bigotry towards English speaking Canadians and towards the French speaking ones. It was Conn Smythe, founder of the Leafs who used to start speeches saying ?Ladies, Gentlemen, and Frenchmen? and often referred to French speaking Canadians as ?frogs?. Whether this was politically correct or not is a different story for a different time but this was the general view of most Canadians towards the Montreal Canadiens. This is also the origins of what we call ?Leaf Nation? today because they have fans not only in Toronto, but across Canada as well. As the years went on, the league expanded from 6 to 12 teams in 1967. Then from 1970-1979 the NHL expanded from 12 to 22 (including the Vancouver Canucks, Edmonton Oilers, Quebec Nordiques and Winnepeg Jets), while also in that time period, the Atlanta Flames moved to Calgary. In 1992 the last Canadian team to enter the NHL was the Ottawa Senators. In these cities, each one of these teams have had to compete with the Leafs (and the Canadiens in Quebec?s circumstance) for attention. Most were able to right away, but there is always that minority to this day that are Leaf fans. Due to that minority, the media will cater to them, showing the highlights and breaking down Leaf games as well as the games in their own cities. To add to this, as Toronto is the biggest and most corporate city in Canada, most media stations are run in Toronto causing much more of a focus on the Leafs. When speaking to fans of other teams outside of Toronto, most say that they just hate having the Leafs being stuffed down their throat. They call it obnoxious and annoying. However, there?s a fine line between ?obnoxious? and jealousy. What these fans really want is more coverage of their own team, and when they see Toronto?s media cover each and ever detail of their team and the Leaf fans just eat it up each time, they are angered by the fact that these fans are getting the top quality attention their team, while they don?t. It is not only hockey fans who feel this way. Also fans of the other 3 major sports (namely the Raptors and the Blue Jays) in Toronto cannot stand the amount of attention that the Leafs get. On a regular sports highlight show, it almost always is led off with the Leafs, and then the other hockey highlights and scores before they get to the other sports. By this point it may be halfway or even three quarters into the program. During this point the typical baseball or basketball fan has to endure all of these scores and highlights that they do not care about just to get to their own sport. While again, these fans get annoyed by this, the reason this is, is because their sport is not getting the attention that the Leafs are getting. While it maybe true that they do have the Leafs get stuffed down their throats every night, it is also true that it happens because enough people want it to happen. The other aspect of this is that some people just do find Leaf fans obnoxious. They see them as fans who do not think logically and believe that they have the best team ever, not to mention that they think that Toronto is the centre of the universe. To an extent they are correct. It is probably easier to have an unbiased conversation about the Leafs with a non-Leaf fan than it is with a true, blue Leaf fan because the non-Leaf fan have not fallen in love with the players on the team, and can see them for what they really are. And if this person is not biased the other way (someone who hates the Leafs), that person will probably have a better plan on how to improve the Leaf than a typical Leaf fan. This perspective of the typical Leaf fan is also an aspect of why Toronto has not won anything in 40 years. The fans put so much pressure into making the popular move, that it may not be the best thing for the team. Toronto probably has not had the general manager who had enough guts to make the unpopular move since Cliff Fletcher traded a package including the popular Wendel Clark to Quebec for a package that included a young Mats Sundin. That said, as Bill Parcells once said ?If you listen to the fans too much, you?ll end up sitting with them.? In Toronto, the feeling around hockey is ?it?s us against the world.? The more the Leafs succeed, the more everyone else will be rooting for them to fail. This creates the euphoria that surrounds the Leafs everyday to contrast the people who hate them. The thing is, as long as the Leafs are around, this will not change. The way the Leafs and their fans became the way they are now is because of the long history it has had. As other teams become more and more situated, the Leafs history will only grow and Leaf fans will continue to love them. So the rivalry will continue, as the Leafs try to break out of their slump, everyone else will do everything possible to keep them down. Though, as long as the Leafs are where they are at this present time, everyone else has nothing to worry about. If anyone has any comments feel free to email me at [email protected]