Toronto Maple Leafs

Toronto Maple Leafs, Canadian professional ice hockey team based in Toronto that plays in the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League (NHL). The Maple Leafs have one of hockey’s most-storied pasts, having won the Stanley Cup 13 times.

The Maple Leafs were one of the NHL’s 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’s first five years (in the 1917–18 and 1921–22 seasons). In 1927 the team was purchased by Conn Smythe and renamed the Maple Leafs (often shortened to “the Leafs” by fans and media). Toronto won the Stanley Cup in the 1931–32 season behind the “Kid Line,” which featured three future Hockey Hall of Fame members—Charlie Conacher, Busher Jackson, and Joe Primeau—all under age 26.

Between 1932–33 and 1939–40 the Leafs appeared in six Stanley Cup finals but lost each time. The team broke through and captured a championship in 1941–42, 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, who led the team to the final four of Day’s titles as well as another in 1950–51. 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, left wing Frank Mahovlich, left wing Bob Pulford, and defenseman Allan Stanley) won three Stanley Cups in a row from 1961–62 to 1963–64 and one more during the 1966–67 season.

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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 Börje Salming for most of that time. In the following decade, Toronto fell farther from contention, 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 1999–2000 season; however, sustained playoff success continued to elude the franchise, which never advanced past the conference finals over Sundin’s 13 seasons in Toronto.

Following a franchise-record seven-year postseason drought, the Maple Leafs returned to the playoffs in 2012–13 only to extend the misery of the team’s tortured fan base by losing the deciding seventh game of its opening series in overtime after leading the Boston Bruins 4–1 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 2016–17 (a first-round loss to the top-seeded Washington Capitals 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.

Despite the team’s later lack of success, the Maple Leafs routinely rank at the top of the NHL in attendance, owing to the fervour of Toronto hockey fans as well as the team’s long-established series of rivalries. The bitterest of those feuds is with the Montreal Canadiens, which plays on tensions between Quebec and Ontario (and those between English-speaking Canadians and French-speaking Canadians) and is considered by many to be the greatest rivalry in hockey.