Whoever Came Up With This Motto For The Toronto Maple Leafs Knew Exactly What They Were Doing
You remember when Herb Brooks told Craig Patrick that he wasn't picking the best players for the 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team, but the right ones? Well the the Toronto Maple Leafs are the exact opposite of that. The Leafs are what happen when you just try to assemble an all-star team in the NHL. They have a ton of talent, and can put up some incredible numbers during the regular season. But once the playoffs come around, and the games start to tighten up a bit? Well the Leafs have shown time and time again that they fold like a cheap suit.
There's only one way that a team can lose 8 straight winner-take-all games. That's if they don't have any grit, and they refuse to grind. Wait a minute....
Maybe it was intentional. Perhaps it was done subconsciously. But somewhere deep in the brain of whoever came up with this motto was the understanding of what they were doing here.
Don't get me wrong--I know sometimes team mottos like this aren't fully thought out, and they can come back to bite you a bit. The Philadelphia Flyers once had the motto "Fly or Die", and then one of their players was diagnosed with cancer. Fortunately, Oskar Lindblom was in remission a year after his diagnosis. But it still wasn't the greatest motto for the Flyers to work with.
This is completely different though. Because everybody knows the biggest thing the Leafs have lacked over the past 10 years or so is grit and determination. The chances of this one blowing up in their face was 50-50 at best. So either the Leafs have the world's worst gamblers in their marketing department, or someone knew that the hockey world would appreciate getting one more chance to dunk on Toronto on their way out. And for that, we thank you tremendously.