I grew up a Leafs fan during the Harold Ballard era. Will his curse on the team ever end? | CBC Documentaries

In the winters of the ’70s and ’80s, my Saturday nights in Guelph, Ont., were spent dreading church the next morning, watching the Maple Leafs lose — yet again — on Hockey Night in Canada, and listening to my father swear as the Maple Leafs lost — yet again — on Hockey Night in Canada. 

I’m kidding. Dad didn’t watch the Leafs; he’d do something more interesting like stare at the furnace or dice carrots. But I dutifully sat in front of that flickering black and white TV, eating animal crackers in my onesie (which was a bit weird by the time I graduated high school), and watched as the pride of Toronto got pounded. Every time, I wondered (a) what were the chances that an earthquake or a hurricane or locusts would cancel church? and (b) will the Leafs ever win another Stanley Cup?

The Leafs were bad. Reliably, relentlessly and ridiculously bad — worse than my Aunt Bea’s soda biscuits (are anybody’s soda biscuits good?). And they were bad because their owner, a felonious blowhard named Harold Ballard, cared more about making a buck than making the playoffs. 

Born in Toronto in 1903, Ballard came from money, but he always wanted more. 

After fostering a friendship with Stafford Smythe — son of longtime Leafs owner Conn Smythe — and sitting on the Leafs board alongside him, Ballard methodically removed, bought out or shoved aside every roadblock until he assumed full control of the team in 1972. 

Thus began the Ballard curse, a two-decade cavalcade of greed and incompetence that gutted the once-proud organization. 

Ballard fired coach after coach after don’t-bother-to-unpack coach, and traded away the best players. When Leafs legend and Hall of Famer Darryl Sittler was shipped to Philadelphia in exchange for a couple of forgettable Flyers, it was like swapping a Rolls-Royce for a Toyota (if the Toyota never back-checked and had chronic groin injuries). And those are just some of his dumb moves.

Under Ballard’s management, the Maple Leafs were bottom of the barrel | Offside: The Harold Ballard Story

Toronto hockey fans lost a lot of faith in the Leafs of the 70s and 80s. Even the players themselves felt the disappointment relentless losses.

Consequently, when “Pal Hal” (Ballard) passed away in 1990, optimists said the curse was kaput and the Leafs could now win a Cup for the first time since 1967.

But a funny thing happened while everybody was planning the Stanley Cup parade and painting their butt cheeks blue and white: the Leafs didn’t win it all. Since the day Ballard went to the big penalty box in the sky, the Leafs have been better — a lot better (last season, only three teams had more regular season points than Toronto), but the curse still appears to be in effect. Unless, of course, you don’t believe in such stuff, in which case there must be some other explanation for the Leafs seemingly unending lack of success. For instance:

1. The universe doesn’t let a team win the Stanley Cup if they charge $19 dollars for a beer.

2. The universe doesn’t let a team win the Stanley Cup if they charge $26 for a large beer.

3. The team lacks the goaltending to go deep into the playoffs and Zeus put a curse on them and they need a good third-line centre.

4. The team doesn’t want to win because a Stanley Cup parade would make the traffic in Toronto even worse and who wants that?

5. The Leafs actually did win it in 2018, but no one noticed because Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again was so distractingly funny and heartwarming.

6. They can’t win as long as Harold Ballard’s pact with Satan is still binding.

Whether you believe there’s a curse or not, the fact is that before Ballard arrived, the Leafs won 13 championships, and since Ballard arrived, the team has won as many Stanley Cups as the dead squirrel in my bird feeder. 

Short of hiring a team exorcist, I do wonder what it will take to reach the mountaintop. As I settle in to watch them for yet another doomed season (my kids cheer for Calgary and Colorado; they don’t want to end up drunk and weepy like Papa), it occurs to me that we’ve overlooked an obvious, viable road map to winning it all: the NHL would have to give the Leafs the Cup if all the other teams were wiped out by an earthquake or a hurricane or locusts. Right? 

Chuck Tatham is a podcast and television comedy writer (Full House, Arrested Development, How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family), and the executive producer of Offside: The Harold Ballard Story.