Feeding the fish: day one

Uh, hey guys. Andrew Potter here. I normally run a blog over at Rebelsell.com, but Andrew Coyne asked me to feed you while he is away. Well, I guess we should get started… Why do the Leafs suck? That is, why have they sucked for so long? How can a team, in the self-styled centre of the hockey universe, go so long without winning a Stanley Cup? Except for Ottawa, every other Canadian team has made the Cup finals in the last twenty years, while Calgary, Montreal, and Edmonton have won Cups. And is there anyone who would put serious money on the Leafs making the Cup finals before Ottawa does? So what is wrong with the Toronto Maple Leafs? Some obvious possibilities: 1. Bad owners. 2. Bad coaches. 3. Bad players. 4. Bad fans. 5. Bad luck. I suppose that Toronto’s 40-year stinkitude can be chalked up to some version of “all of the above.” Ballard was a bad owner, John Brophy wasn’t a great coach, and the Leafs haven’t had a genuinely strong team since the early 1990s. Like Cubs fans, Leafs fans are famously loyal, to the point that it actually harms the team. Less loyal fans would demand better results, putting pressure on the management to actually care about the on-ice product. As for luck, every Leafs fan I know still moans about Gretzky high-sticking Gilmour and then going on to score. But surely there has to be more to it than this. Is it really credible that a club with the resources that the Leafs have could be so unsuccessful for so long? Could it be that the Leafs in some sense deserve to lose? Is the real question, not why do the Leafs suck, but why must they?