"They're Still Standing"--Vol. 2

MAPLE LEAF GARDENSThe big house at 60 Carlton Street in Toronto is one of the true cathedrals of hockey.  Maple Leaf Gardens is one of only two of the longtime “original six” NHL arenas still in existence—along with the Montreal Forum—and sadly it faces a bleak and uncertain future.  In addition to its glorious past, Maple Leaf Gardens also holds the distinction of being the only sports venue that yours truly has ever been kicked out of!  More on that later…

Since the Maple Leafs (not “Leaves”, youse Americans!) moved to the antiseptic and sterile Air Canada Center in February, 1999 along with the NBA’s Raptors, MLG has been dying a slow and painful death.  The team’s owners refuse to sell the building to anyone who would create competition for ACC, so apart from hosting some amateur hockey tournaments, a professional indoor lacrosse team, and rehearsal site for a Rolling Stones tour, Maple Leaf Gardens has rarely been used in the past eight years.  If you want to see what eight years of neglect and decay of an old sports arena looks like, check out the above photo, as well as the photos on this very cool website—it’s not pretty, though.  There are also some recent interior photos of the soon-to-be demolished Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo on this site as well.

But back in the day, MLG housed some mighty fine hockey, particularly in the ‘40s and ‘60s when the Leafs fielded some bad-ass teams featuring the likes of Syl Apps, Ted Kennedy (no, not that Ted Kennedy!), Frank Mahovlich, Red Kelly, Johnny Bower, Dave Keon, Andy Bathgate and the late Tim Horton.  Toronto won 11 Stanley Cups in all at The Gardens, which seemingly hosted "Hockey Night In Canada" every other Saturday.  Ironicially, MLG was also the site of the very first NBA game in 1946 between the Toronto Huskies and New York Knicks.  The NBA returned to MLG in the late ‘90s as the Raptors split time between there and the SkyDome.  MLG was also home to The Who’s final concert on their 1982 “Farewell Tour”.  Ending North American tours in Toronto has become a bit of a tradition with The Who over the years too, as Ontario’s largest city has been their final stop no less than four times throughout their career.

What sucks about big old arenas is it’s hard to find uses for them after they’ve been decommissioned as sports venues.  The Forum in Montreal is so beloved that the people there got creative and came up with a mixed-use concept for the arena after it was gutted, and it now houses a shopping mall and entertainment complex called the Pepsi Forum.  There had been talk in recent years of converting Maple Leaf Gardens into an over-sized grocery store, and that sounds positively icky to me!  I have a better idea—the Hockey Hall of Fame is just a few blocks away from MLG, and while it’s housed in a quaint old building, what better place to have a Hall of Fame than an actual hockey arena?  This would give them room to expand as time goes on, and many of the exhibits could be placed right there on the original floor where the ice surface was.  Sure would be better than a misbegotten behemoth grocery store…

Okay, so what was it that I did to get evicted from MLG, you ask?  Well, during my “The Puck Stops Everywhere” tour in 1994, I very much wanted to see this great hockey shrine, but I knew in advance it would be a tough ticket because the Maple Leafs didn’t sell single-game tickets to their games—it was strictly season tickets across the board.  So, my only option was to frequent a scalper, an activity I normally do not condone, as ticket scalpers to me are a form of subhuman species every bit as low as child molesters, TV evangelists and radio shock jocks.  Against my better judgment, on a sunny March Saturday afternoon, I forked over the then-outrageous sum of $60 (Canuck) for a ticket to that night’s game vs. those dreaded Quebec Nordiques.

It was a shitty seat, to be sure (from which I snapped this photo), at such an angle that I had to keep my head turned at a 45-degree angle to my left to see the ice, and the seat was tiny and the row was cramped—people must’ve been a lot smaller back in the ’20s and ‘30s when they built these old arenas, because I wound up getting to know my neighbors a little more than I would’ve liked while I was there.  Anyway, about midway through the first period, an usher comes down the aisle and motions to me and the guy sitting next to me to come out.  At first, I thought maybe we were in the wrong section, but he looked at our tickets and escorted us out to the concourse where a team official stood with an exasperated “Oh no, not again…” look on his face.  It turns out that the tickets the other guy and I bought were stolen from a season ticket holder, and evidently this was a nightly ritual of having to escort people out who had purchased them on the street.  They told us that if we could point out the scalper on the street to them, they’d bust his ass, but naturally he was long gone and I didn’t remember what he looked like anyway.

To make a long story short, my one and only visit to the famed Maple Leaf Gardens was ever-so-brief.  But hey, at least I got to see the place.  That whole weekend was a bit of a FUBAR, as I made the mistake of waiting until the next morning to try to go up in the CN Tower before I left town, as it was foggy and rainy all day and you couldn’t see a freakin' thing.  But naturally, it was bright and sunny the afternoon before—d’oh!  Toronto is a beautiful city, though, and I hope to get back up there one of these days...