We have a great game, a great country, and a great empireâif you gentlemen are as great as the possibilities of the O.H.A, if we Canadians are as great as the possibilities of Canada, and if we Britons are as great as the glory of our Empireâthe flag of amateurism in your hands will be as safe from harm as the Union Jack was in the hands of your fathers and mine!

âJ
OHN
R
OSS
R
OBERTSON
, P
RESIDENT
, O
NTARIO
H
OCKEY
A
SSOCIATION
, 1905

INTRODUCTION
F
ACING
O
FF

March 14, 1908: Saturday night at the Montreal Arena at the corner of St. Catherine Street and Wood Avenue. Also known as Westmount Arena, the ten-year-old hockey rink with the natural ice and the novel rounded corners is the largest in the country. Along with many hundreds who will stand, 4,500 fans will cram into the rows of hard wooden seats they can soften and warm with rugs available for rent.

Outdoors, it has been a mild, springlike day at the tail end of a soft winter in which the St. Lawrence River has remained open longer than it has for thirty years. Indoors, a battle for the Stanley Cup is about to begin.

The visitors from Toronto step onto the ice amid the polite applause of the spectators. The local papers have reported that this upstart team is a decent aggregation, but no one expects them to beat the home side. Their Montreal Wanderers have successfully dominated hockey's top tier for the better part of three seasons.

One of the Ontario challengers is well known toâand highly regarded byâthe Montreal fans. He is a grizzled veteran pro lining up in the key position of rover. He is flanked, however, by two even better forwards.

At centre stands a young French Canadian who will someday be regarded as one of the greatest competitors of all time. And at left wing
is the best player the city of Toronto has yet produced, with both great triumph and tragedy ahead of him. In a moment, the game will start and this handsome young star's speed and skill will stun the overconfident Montrealers.

The Wanderers are about to have the fight of their lives.

But if the visiting team has been underestimated by Montreal observers, the hockey establishment back home in Toronto holds it in utter contempt. They may resent Montreal, but they detest this club, their
own
club, even more. Toronto's leading newspaper has dismissed its Cup aspirations as the delusions of “false alarm hockey statesmen”
¹hoping to collect some fast bucks from the gate receipts.

In fact, from its beginnings the club has been the object of disdain and ridicule by the hockey powers in its hometown. Upon its formation in the fall of 1906, the same journal had wishfully mused that “professional hockey in Toronto promises to flourish till the frost comes. Then like other flowers it will fade away and die.”
²When the team lost its first gameâan exhibition affairâby a score of 7â0, a rival paper said ticket buyers had only proved there truly was “a sucker born every minute.”
³

Things got no better the following season, when the team joined a full-fledged pro league. “All the world is laughing,” declared the powerful
Toronto Telegram
, “at a so-called professional hockey league that can only get players that real professional leagues don't want. It's not a professional league at all. It's a disqualified amateurs' league.”
⁴

In fact, the whole league experiment seemed jinxed. For the first game, a team from Berlin (later to be renamed Kitchener) had come to town by train, but the Saturday papers were not even thinking about hockey. They were consumed with the sudden passing of Ned Hanlan at the age of fifty-two. The “Boy in Blue” had been Canada's first-ever world championâa rowing prize he captured before 100,000 spectators on the River Thamesâand he had been the city's most beloved athlete for years. “The death of Edward Hanlan removed the most famous oarsman that ever lived,” proclaimed the
Globe
. “Nor is it likely that any other who comes after him will occupy so large a share of public attention.”
⁵

Things were even worse inside the rink, where a big winter thaw had taken its toll. The Monday papers were far more interested in the
playing conditions than the play. The
News
labelled it “Hockey on Bare Floor” and observed that “by the time play ceased there was not ten yards of solid ice in the rink.”
⁶The
World
was no less kind, summing up the match with “The Flying Dutchmen of Berlin proved better mud horses than the Torontos.”
⁷The team had again lost its season opener by a shutout, this time 3â0. It seemed some local scribes even held them responsible for the weather.

Yet the progress of the organization has proven remarkably steady and swift. Indeed, by the time of its arrival in Montreal less than three months later, it has been able to ice the best hockey team ever to wear a Toronto uniform. Less than a year and a half into its existence, the club has genuine hopes of capturing the Cup, much to the delight of its fansâbut only of its fans.

The truth is that in Toronto the hockey bosses are hoping the team will lose the game. They would rather “their” team and Lord Stanley's mug did not even exist. We know this because they say soâoften and loudly.

Who were these Stanley Cup contenders and what happened to them? History has told us they were the original “Toronto Maple Leafs.” In fact, they were never, ever, called by this name.
⁸They were simply the “Torontos,” sometimes (at times sarcastically) the “Toronto Professionals.” So determinedâand successfulâwould be their naysayers in obliterating their existence that even their name would be long forgotten.

Their opponents are some of the most powerful people in Toronto. They are in the midst of leading one side in the national “Athletic War.” It is an extraordinary chapter in Canada's social historyâa sort of witch hunt against professional sports so intense and so divisive that the country may not enter the coming summer's Olympics in London, England.

Today, none of this makes any sense, not in a time when
Forbes
magazine has certified that Toronto boasts the most valuable professional hockey franchise in the world.
⁹

A century ago, however, Toronto was a very different place.