Toronto Maple Leafs

▪ Canadian hockey team

      Canadian professional ice hockey team based in Toronto that plays in the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League (NHL). The Maple Leafs have one of hockey's most storied pasts, having won the Stanley Cup 13 times.

 One of the NHL's founding teams in 1917, the Maple Leafs were first known as the Toronto Arenas before taking on the name St. Patricks in 1919. The team won two Stanley Cups in the NHL's first five years (in the 1917–18 and 1921–22 seasons). In 1927 the team was purchased by Conn Smyth (Smythe, Conn) and renamed the Maple Leafs. Toronto won the Stanley Cup in the 1931–32 season behind the “Kid Line,” which featured three future Hockey Hall of Fame members—Charlie Conacher, Busher Jackson, and Joe Primeau—all under age 26.

      Centre Ted Kennedy led the Maple Leafs to five Stanley Cup titles in a seven-year span, from the 1944–45 season to the 1950–51 season. A rebuilt Maple Leafs team led by head coach Punch Imlach, defenseman and centre Red Kelly, centre Dave Keon, and left wing Frank Mahovlich won three Stanley Cups in a row from 1961–62 to 1963–64 and one more during the 1966–67 season. While later teams featured such stars as Lanny McDonald, Darryl Sittler, and franchise scoring leader Mats Sundin, the Maple Leafs have not appeared in a Stanley Cup final since 1967. Despite the team's later lack of success, the Maple Leafs rank at the top of the league in attendance, owing to the fervour of Toronto hockey fans, as well as the team's long-established series of rivalries. The bitterest of these feuds is with the Montreal Canadiens, which plays on tensions between Quebec and Ontario (and those between English-speaking Canadians and French-speaking Canadians) and is considered by many to be the greatest rivalry in hockey.

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