All World Hockey by T. Michael Travers

(Would you have believed at the beginning of the 2025 season that the Toronto Blue Jays had even a remote chance of playing and finishing the season the way they did?) How did The Jays beat the American League's leading home run-hitting New York Yankees and advance towards the World Serious? There's BLUE everywhere! Have you noticed the Blue Jay caps, jerseys and flags in opposing teams' ballparks when the Jays are on the road? Anaheim, Detroit, Baltimore, Miami, Denver, Seattle. Jays fans are everywhere! It's a team that all Canadians can gather around, support and cheer for. You can see Jay's paraphernalia in the most unusual places. Photos by your scribbler  ... I've seen Jay caps at The Vatican in Rome, Tracé-déroulé in Paris, and on La Rambla in Barcelona, as well as on the beach at Juno in Normandy. Whenever I do, I always ask the cap owner ... "Who's your favourite Blue Jay, all time?" The answers aren't surprising... Carter! Olerud! Rob...

This is way too early to be talking hockey. However, the Maple Leaf Hockey Club has just announced the new ticket price list for the coming season, and   Leaf Nation  has some questions about the across-the-board ticket price hikes. I'm not going to talk about it here because the hockey media has been crucifying the decision makers. But I would like to bring your attention to one game --  January 23, 2026 .  It has my Leafs against the team from Vegas, and Mitch Marner's first time in Scotiabank wearing something other than blue and white. If you would like to buy a cheap seat ticket to this game -- not standing room with an unobstructed view -- the price is $421.75 each. By comparison, later in the season, the Leafs' all-time rival, the Montreal Canadiens, game for the same seats is $336.75 each.  It appears someone in the Leaf organization understands the value of "Mitchy". Or is the ticket office just anticipating increased interest in that game so Marne...

  Captain Definition :  "Captain is the only player designated by the team to speak with game officials regarding rule interpretations". That may be the rulebook definition of NHL team captain, but, as fans, we may have a more personal description and "a guy who best represents our team and our city". We all have our favourite captain, past or present. After he retired from the game, I asked  Hab  superstar, Guy Lafleur, why he was never the captain of the team. He said, "I didn't want the pressure that comes with that job, especially in a hockey crazy city like Montreal." The Toronto Maple Leafs' first captain was "Hap" Day in 1927, and the team's most recent appointee is Auston Matthews. In Leafs' history, we've had some outstanding choices as well as some embarrassments. No need to use this space to dwell on the poor choices when I can acknowledge one of the game's finest ambassadors and a team captain beyond compare, D...

In September, before the start of the 2024 - 25 NHL season, the Vegas bookies named the Maple Leafs to be 8th in their selection process for winning the Stanley Cup.  I regrettably had to admit that "Vegas is rarely wrong ... it's how they managed to build all those skyscrapers on The Strip". I'm not a hockey expert and have a lengthy record of not being able to handicap winners, but I'm a die-hard, card-caring member of Leaf Nation, so I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. If you decide to proceed to read my summary of this year's Leafs, and you have an interest, please include your thoughts and comments at the end.  In my September pre-season essay, I wondered about the choice of the Leafs for their new captain, Auston Matthews. I wondered if his appointment would be too much for him to handle in this market, particularly because he seems to struggle in front of cameras, trying to defend his mates and dissect the details of a just-played game. Last ye...

  Every Canadian Father Wants the Same Thing    to see their son playing in the NHL, and it doesn't matter which team. Prologue: The statement above is accurate for many Canadian fathers. "If only my son would be good enough to play in the NHL." In the 1960s, the Toronto Maple Leafs beat writer for Canada's National Newspaper, The Globe and Mail, was Hockey Hall of Fame writer Scott Young. Young was the premier hockey writer of the day and covered the Leafs as they earned four Stanley Cups in the decade, and produced several novels related to the game. He once wrote a column in the newspaper about how he wished his son would one day become a Leaf. His write-up discussed his disappointment when the lad never became a player. However, the end of the article uncovers the real story about his son, as Scott said, "I walked down Church Street to enter the main doors of Maple Leaf Gardens to see my son perform ... The Gardens marquee announced  TONIGHT 8 PM NEIL YOUNG!...