Ultimate Road Trip , livre ebook

Ecw Press - Mike Wilson

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233 pages

English

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The Ultimate Leafs Fan makes it his mission to figure out what makes fans bleed blueMike Wilson, the man ESPN called the Ultimate Leafs Fan, attended every Leaf contest of the 2018 19 NHL season. With a foreword from club president Brendan Shanahan and colourful souvenir photos, The Ultimate Road Trip allows fans to vicariously experience the journey of a lifetime, and explores the passion of the sign-waving, fully costumed diehards who fill arenas from Alberta to Anaheim.Who are these people? How did they get there? What motivates them to follow a franchise that hasn t won a Stanley Cup in a half century?Through 89 games, from October to April, the retired Bay Street trader explored all 31 rinks to document stories of Leafs love. Mike took every conceivable mode of transport, stayed in team hotels and on the couches of family and friends, then went into the cheap seats, private suites, the streets, sports bars, hotel lobbies, and many ot

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Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	06 octobre 2020
Nombre de lectures	2
EAN13	9781773056036
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	5 Mo

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The Ultimate Road Trip
All 89 Games with the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Ultimate Leafs Fan
Mike Wilson and Lance Hornby

Contents Dedication Foreword by Brendan Shanahan Introduction Chapter 1: Toronto Chapter 2: Chicago Chapter 3: Dallas Chapter 4: Detroit Chapter 5: Washington Chapter 6: Toronto Chapter 7: Winnipeg Chapter 8: Pittsburgh Chapter 9: Boston Chapter 10: Los Angeles Chapter 11: San Jose Chapter 12: Anaheim Chapter 13: Carolina Chapter 14: Columbus Chapter 15: Minnesota Chapter 16: Buffalo Chapter 17: Boston Chapter 18: Carolina Chapter 19: Tampa Bay Chapter 20: Florida Chapter 21: New Jersey Chapter 22: Columbus Chapter 23: New Jersey Chapter 24: Tampa Chapter 25: Florida Chapter 26: Detroit Chapter 27: Montreal Chapter 28: New York Chapter 29: Colorado Chapter 30: Las Vegas Chapter 31: Arizona Chapter 32: St. Louis Chapter 33: Long Island Chapter 34: Calgary Chapter 35: Vancouver Chapter 36: Edmonton Chapter 37: Ottawa Chapter 38: Nashville Chapter 39: Buffalo Chapter 40: Philadelphia Chapter 41: Ottawa Chapter 42: Long Island Chapter 43: Montreal Epilogue: Boston Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright

Dedication
To my dad, Ernie, who instilled the passion for the game and to Leafs Nation, who fulfilled the dream.

Foreword by Brendan Shanahan
I have been a fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs my whole life.
Growing up in a family of six, there was only one reliable thing that would cause everyone to drop what they were doing and come together: the Leafs on a Saturday night. We were a hockey family and we loved the Leafs. Good, bad. Win, lose. No questions asked. They were our team.
Every Leafs fan has their heroes: Darryl Sittler, Lanny McDonald, Borje Salming, and Ian Turnbull were mine.
As a kid, I didn’t have the opportunity to attend games and I didn’t see the team play on the road.
Unless you count afternoons with friends spent staking out the frozen pond behind Darryl Sittler’s house, driving past Bill Derlago in the parking lot of Sherway Gardens, or listening to Salming order popcorn while standing behind him at the Humber movie theatre (his deep raspy voice shocked and awed me!), I never met a player either.
I always had those Saturday nights, though — me, my family, and the Leafs.
When I heard about Mike Wilson’s travels in 2018–19, following the Leafs from city to city, my thought was immediately: what a dream come true for a hockey fan. To travel alongside your favourite team is a bucket-list item very few people have the opportunity to cross off. Once he began sharing the accounts of his travels, I was struck by the number of people he encountered who had stories that go beyond simple fandom.
They are stories of passion for a hockey club. Passion that strengthens the bonds between family and friends. My passion for the Leafs may have been briefly interrupted by my playing career, but, needless to say, it was reinvigorated when I joined the club as president in 2014.
Following that return was one of my favourite Maple Leaf memories, and it didn’t take place anywhere near the ice.
It was my first year on the job in Toronto and my son, Jack, was spending the afternoon in my office prior to that night’s game. We had been sitting and talking when Sittler walked into my office, sat down, and spent 20 minutes or so chatting with us before heading down to the arena, where you can find him as a club ambassador on many game nights.
Now, my son (who was 12 at the time) loved Sidney Crosby. After Darryl left, Jack waited a moment, turned to me, and asked, “Was that like if one day I became president of the Penguins and Sidney Crosby came to talk to me?”
“That’s exactly what it is like,” I replied. Still a fan after all these years.
I’m proud to report that in the time since that meeting, Jack — as well as my daughters, Maggie and Cate — have all taken to wearing the blue and white. The names on the sweaters may have changed several times, but, once again, I’m in a hockey family. We love the Leafs.
The Leafs aren’t best defined by a logo or a player or a moment. They’re best defined by the passion they create in the people who love them. Wherever you are in the hockey world, you can find a Leafs fan, and in that person, you have a friend with a story to share.
You don’t need to take my word for it, though. Enjoy this book and see for yourself through the eyes of Mike, the Ultimate Leafs Fan.
Brendan Shanahan, 2019

Introduction
When I announced I’d be following the Toronto Maple Leafs for the entire 2018–19 season, including the playoffs, the response was typically: Great idea! But why ?
Well, that’s a question I wrestled with myself when I proposed this adventure to my partner, Deb, as far back as five years ago. Back in 2009, ESPN The Magazine anointed me the “Ultimate Leafs Fan” because of the collection of team artifacts I’ve amassed in my 66 years — around 2,000 at last count. I’d started like any kid, at a very early age, compiling all kinds of bubble gum cards, newspaper clippings, coins, and other items.
But my real passion was the game of hockey.
Growing up in Toronto in the late 1950s and ’60s, I spent most of my free time outside. The few channels on the black-and-white TV weren’t exactly loaded with 24-hour entertainment, which meant shinny in our street or house-league rink during the day and watching the pros every Saturday night.
In Toronto, it was never any team except the Leafs on Saturday on CBC or mid-week on another network. The Leafs magnified my obsession with hockey and before long anything related to one of my heroes was a must-have.
Once Deb and I found the right location to house our collection 16 years ago, my objective was simply to use it as a backdrop to our entertainment room, where cold beer would always be available and friends could enjoy watching hockey and other sporting events, such as the Notre Dame Fighting Irish (my favourite football team also occupied a place of honour).
Then, Leafs TV featured “The Room,” as it came to be known, in a two-part series. And before I knew it, we were planning hockey-themed fundraising events for Canfund Olympic recipients or athletes, anti-bullying, and other great causes. The BroBible website voted it the second-best man cave in the world, next to a reproduction of the Bat Cave. As a result, we’d become fairly well known in hockey circles and people wrote us daily, offering new items, asking questions about the century-old franchise, and, best of all, adding to the many stories about the Leafs.

These fans say it all.
Now, some of my most prized possessions, including the original door to the Leafs dressing room at the Gardens, several vintage sweaters, and souvenirs, are part of the Canadian Museum of History. But there is still a chapter of this story that remains unknown: why are fans so passionate about a team that hasn’t won a Stanley Cup in more than 50 years?
Part of it goes back to the early 1930s, when Foster Hewitt first broadcasted games on radio, a medium still in its infancy, across a vast, unconnected country. With the Great Depression crippling the nation and the onset of World War II, this much-needed entertainment prompted families to gather around the set Saturday evenings and listen to games featuring the Leafs. With only two teams in Canada, anyone west of Ontario followed Toronto — an exclusivity of listeners from the Great Lakes to Vancouver Island. That circumstance, in addition to the seven Cups won between 1932 and 1951, laid the foundation for generations.
My ambitious notion to follow the club for a full season originated from a friend in South Bend, Indiana, who hasn’t missed a Notre Dame football game since his graduation in 1977. I thought, why not attempt that for a whole Leafs season?
Watching road games on TV, I’ve often wondered, who are those people in Leafs sweaters having a great time in the stands? Are they from that city? If not, how did they get there? How much did it cost?
To further convince myself this was a worthy quest, I thought of personal experiences crossing paths with Leafs Nation in unlikely places. In 2012, Deb and I were venturing around the marketplace in the old City of Jerusalem, following the Stations of the Cross. We spotted a familiar sight hanging from a vendor’s stall near the Eighth Station: a Toronto tee with “Go Leafs Go,” written in Hebrew.
Later that day, visiting the Western Wall, our guide mentioned it’s customary to write your greatest wishes on a scrap of paper and stuff it into the spaces between the 2,000-year-old limestone bricks for good luck. I wrote, “Please allow the Leafs to make the playoffs and Notre Dame go undefeated.”
Well, the Leafs did make the playoffs for the first time in almost a decade and the Fighting Irish didn’t lose in reaching the national championship. But Toronto crashed and burned in the first round against Boston and ND was destroyed in the final by Alabama. I remember looking at Deb a few days after the painful end to both seasons and remarking, “I think we have to go back to the Wall and include playoffs in our note.”
For my 60th birthday a couple of years later, we were on safari in Tanzania, a surprise gift from the more adventurous Deb, who tries to broaden my interests beyond the rink. One morning, as we walked around the shantytown area of Arusha at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro, a motorcycle came toward us — the driver was wearing a blue Darryl Sittler sweater.
We both looked at each other in amazement before bur