*banner image credit: (Steve Russell/Getty Images/Toronto Star)*
BY: DUANE A. STEINEL
When did you first become a fan of your favorite team? What was the moment? Was it your first live game? Or a specific game on TV? Who were you with? Your father or mother? Maybe it was your brother, sister, or a friend.
We all have that moment that was significant enough to make us a fan of our favorite sports team. For me, it was a few different moments. Like going to Sabres games with my dad during the 1996-1997 season. We sat on the blue line where they shot twice. My first Sabres hockey card was Brad May. I played hockey in my driveway with my brother Brian. Seeing Dominik Hasek play for the first time inspired me to be a goalie. All those moments helped me fall in love with the Buffalo Sabres. They led to me playing competitively until I was 22 years old and coaching after nearly a decade. My passion for this team transcended to other areas of my life and even eventually led to me losing my mind on the radio about the state of my beloved Buffalo Sabres, which is why I’m here now with you all writing this. But I’m not writing this to talk about the Buffalo Sabres. I’m here to talk about the Toronto Maple Leafs and their fanbase.
Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows I’ve had a lot of fun at the expense of the Toronto Maple Leafs. From not winning a Stanley Cup since 1967, to annual playoff collapses, to losing to their own Zamboni driver. This past season though… one thing did change — my feelings about the fan base. For a very long time, I’ve often compared the Toronto Maple Leafs fan base to that of the New York Yankees. They brag about championships that they weren’t even alive for or were too young to remember. They can be annoying, and sometimes downright disrespectful.
I hate it when Toronto comes to Buffalo. Seeing an arena full of blue and white jerseys makes my blood boil because that meant many Sabres fans sold their tickets to opportunistic Leafs fans. No fan likes being outnumbered by the enemy in their arena, especially when the enemy is as loud and passionate as a Leafs fan. They bring a passion to our arena, something that hasn’t existed amongst our fan base for years… Probably not since 2015, when we nearly sold out the arena for development camp after drafting Jack Eichel. We’ve had a lot to be upset about for the last decade as Sabres fans. Since we lost Chris Drury and Daniel Briere on the same day in free agency in 2007, the franchise has been in a slow downward spiral that seems to have no end in sight. Even after the purchase of the team by Terry Pegula, who promised a Stanley Cup within five years, the franchise’s culture maintained its misery.
But we keep coming back. We keep caring. We break the internet to buy royal blue jerseys and take to Sabres Twitter to complain about the state of the team every day.
We’re passionate, loyal, and wear our hearts on our sleeves when it comes to the Buffalo Sabres. At our very core, we are just as much of a hockey city as we are a football one. We just have to find our identity again, much like the Toronto Maple Leafs and their franchise did over the last five years. They went from a punchline to a playoff team after drafting Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, and trading for John Tavares. While they still find ways to lose in dramatic, almost comical fashion, you won’t find a much more loyal hockey fanbase. Sure they go overboard sometimes when losing, like after losing to the Carolina Hurricanes over a year ago, when both of Carolina’s goalies went down with injuries during the game.
Carolina had to resort to David Ayres, the Toronto emergency backup goalie (EBUG), and the Leafs’ own Zamboni driver. Ayres would enter the game with 8:41 remaining in the second period and a 3-1 lead, only to give up goals on his first two shots faced. He stopped the final ten shots from the Maple Leafs and secured the win for the Hurricanes, sending one of Toronto’s most passionate fans into an epic meltdown that would only help build up the “Legend of David Ayres.”
After I had my meltdown on WGR550 here in Buffalo, Steve “Dangle” Glynn reached out to me to come on the Steve Dangle Podcast to talk about what inspired the call and what finally sent me over the edge as a Sabres fan. I won’t lie, I didn’t know too much about Steve and how he began his career in 2007 when he started posting hockey and Maple Leaf videos to Youtube. That led to his Leaf Fan Reaction videos, better known as “LFR”. He then went on to create the Steve Dangle Podcast with his childhood friends Adam Wylde and Jesse Blake, which over the years has earned a massive social media following with hundreds of thousands of global hockey fans tuning in. His passion for not just his team, but the game of hockey, is so contagious that even this die-hard Sabres fan has subscribed to both his podcast and Youtube channel.
His most recent mental breakdown came immediately after the Leafs blew a 3-1 series lead to the Montreal Canadiens in the first round of the playoffs. It’s been 17 years since the Maple Leafs won a playoff series. That’s 6,250 days. This video in its first 24 hours of being uploaded, received over 280,000 views. As I’m writing this article, it currently sits at 427,000 views. As Steve states in this video, some fans come to watch these videos and laugh at a Leafs fan and his agony over, for what as I’ve said many times about being a Sabres fan, a team that’s made losing an art form. We just don’t lose, we’re a punchline.
The majority of his viewers, however, are from the Leafs Nation looking for answers. Over the last decade, and even more so since being hired by Sportsnet in 2014, Steve has become the face of the fanbase. He exemplifies what it’s like to be a fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs. His passion resonates with the fans, and they identify with him through that same passion. It’s why I’m able to identify with him as well. It’s been a decade since the Buffalo Sabres made it to the postseason, and with every season, they find new and agonizing ways to give us hope and rip our hearts out, hold it while it beats right before our eyes.
In the video, Steve goes through many of the collapses over the last decade by the Leafs. Playoff losses to the Bruins in 2013, 2018, and 2019, the Capitals in 2017, the Blue Jackets in 2020, and this past season to Montreal. He lists the very moments that represent some of these losses. He goes through the current roster and how GM Kyle Dubas put together possibly the most complete team Toronto has had in decades.
So what went wrong for the Leafs in 2021?
Why couldn’t a team that was perhaps more built to win a championship than any other team (except maybe Tampa Bay) not get past the first round for the 17th consecutive year? That’s the question Leafs Nation keeps asking. Why, year after year, decade after decade, do the Toronto Maple Leafs keep letting them down? Steve didn’t have an answer, and quite frankly neither do I. But one thing is certain. As angry as you all are right now, demanding the trades of core players or wanting some kind of shakeup… you’ll be back. We bleed the colors of our teams. We have this undying loyalty to a franchise that seems to consistently never give us what we give them. Your time, money, and emotions are seemingly taken for granted.
When interviewing Steve on Episode 51 of 2 Goalies 1 Mic, we said that at least the Leafs have won the Stanley Cup before. He responded, “Yeah but I don’t have one”. I really respected that. He chooses not to latch onto banners that he wasn’t alive to see rise to the rafters. He cares about what he’s been able to bear witness to, which has been the same as us: zero Stanley Cups. He just wants hockey fans to be happy for him, as he would be for me and you if our teams won. Because he knows how hard it can be. We’re so emotionally invested year in and year out and are ultimately disappointed the same.
The difference between us and him though is that he is financially obligated to talk about them for the majority of the year. We can choose to ignore the losing by not watching TV or listening to the radio on the drive to and from work. We can ignore social media for a few days. Steve has to embrace it, and night after night find ways to convey his emotions and give Leafs fans the answers they’re looking for. I respect that even more because I can turn it off if I have to when it gets too overwhelming. Steve can’t.
Being considered the “Hockey Mecca” of Canada, there’s even more pressure to succeed. You’re constantly in the spotlight as one of hockey’s biggest markets. In the words of Dangle himself, “There’s no sports team on Earth like this one.” That pains me to agree with as a Sabres fan. As Baseball is our national pastime here in the states, hockey is that in Canada. They do just as much pride in hockey as we do in our national pastime.
Toronto is viewed by many as the heart of hockey in Canada. I guess that’s the most significant difference between our franchises. One market is a desirable destination with great hockey minds in place, while the other annihilates its players and fans every year. While both teams seem to find insufferable ways to lose and cause their fans immeasurable pain, Toronto has the right hockey people in place that are doing their best to put a winning team on the ice every season. They have great hockey minds in place to right the ship. Whereas in Buffalo, we have an ownership group that does just the opposite. There is no accountability and inexperience in key decision-making positions, including President of the Team, Kim Pegula, who has zero experience running a sports franchise.
Maybe one day, your loyalty will be rewarded. One day in Downtown Toronto, Jesse Blake will celebrate on a parade float with Willy Nylander. Adam Wylde will shotgun a few Labatt Blue Lights with Mitch Marner. Maybe Steve Dangle will get the opportunity to drink from Lord Stanley’s Cup with Johnny Tavares or Auston Matthews. I can’t think of many Leafs fans more deserving.
Hopefully, though, that won’t happen before we get to hear Rob Ray and the legendary Rick Jeanneret call a Stanley Cup-winning goal here in Buffalo at KeyBank Center, with over 10,000 raging Sabres fans outside the arena at a Party in the Plaza (Yeah NHL, Buffalo started that back in 2006). We can see a Stanley Cup parade of our own culminate at City Hall with speeches from players and maybe even alumni. I can’t and won’t try to predict who those players will be with what’s transpired over the last few months. Right now, though, that all seems like a pipe dream. Getting to see Jack Eichel accept the Cup as Captain of this team and finally bring a championship to a city that’s suffered through so many disappointments could have been special. But I’ll be back. Call it stupidity, blind loyalty, or just pride in my city and what we represent, but I’ll always love the Buffalo Sabres. You Leafs fans aren’t too bad either. I’ll get a beer and wings with ya’ll.
Thanks, everyone… I’ll Hang Up and Listen.
P.S. BLOW LEAFS BLOW
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