33 Years Ago in Leafland; March 26, 1987

Spring of 1987. The Maple Leafs went on an improbable playoff run. They got to within a game of meeting the mighty Edmonton Oilers in the Campbell Conference Finals. I was a 15 year-old hockey mad kid enjoying the fortunes of my favourite team. What better time than now to look back at this memorable time of my youth and Leafs history.

 The Leafs paid the price for their terrible effort the night before in a 6-2 home loss to the team they are chasing for the playoffs. The punishing practice went as follows:
10:25am Practice begins, players "skated mercilessly"
10:50am Shooting practice on individual rink-length rushes
11:00am Ten more minutes of "hard skating"
11:10am Ice re-surfaced
11:50am Line rushes, two-on-ones, two-on-nones, three-on-ones with full contact, "You've got gear on. He's got gear on. You're allowed to touch him. I don't care if you don't like it. I hope you hit him good." yelled coach John Brophy.
12:30pm Players sent to one end of the rink and began "stops and starts" between the bluelines
One by one, the more diligent workers were allowed to leave the ice. Eventually, only the entire defence corps, the guys who hadn't seen much ice time against Minnesota...and Tom Fergus remained.

 Afterwards, Brophy complained to reporters, "I don't care if they don't like it. We had 17 hits against Minnesota and three of our defencemen didn't have any hits at all. Tell me you're supposed to win that way. We played four games against them in here this year and lost them all. A team in our own division for chrissake. We didn't even make them sweat."
Toronto Star writer, Jim Proudfoot suggested, "It's McNamara who must walk the plank...He has made the odd productive trade and some decent drafts...In the broader picture, actually, these rare sound moves may only prove that anybody can get lucky on occaison. Most of McNamara's decisions have been bad." Al Strachan of the Globe and Mail questioned many of McNamara's moves, "Why didn't someone in the front office have the brains to beat the Edmonton Oilers to the punch and look into the possibility of acquiring Reijo Ruotsalainen? Why did management offer Craig Muni a termination contract allowing him to slip away to the Oilers? Do the Leafs now wish they had Gaston Gingras back to play defence? (His 43 points are 14 more than any Leaf defenceman). Why was Walter Poddubny traded for Mike Allison? Did it have anything to do with the fact that Poddubny took the team to arbitration? (His 39 goals are 5 more than any Leaf). Why does the team have only one assistant coach when every other team except Vancouver has two? Why has the team steadfastly refused for almost 10 years to acquire any players from Finland or Sweden? Why are Allan Bester and Steve Thomas playing out their options?
So many questions. All of them valid. 
With the possibility of making the playoffs seemingly out of the question, the post-mortem had begun in full force. 

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