Bob Duff, Windsor Star
Published: Monday, November 05, 2007
It’s meant as a celebration of the Toronto Maple Leafs, but in its execution, the process of selecting the top 100 players in franchise history became a damning indictment of the View HERE…Mats Sundin in Toronto Maple Leafs Mats Sundin: The Toronto Maple Leafs’ All-Time Great Says Goodbye to Hockey”
Among the top 10 in the rankings, only two of them launched their careers as recently as the 1970s. You have to go all the way down to No. 12 to find a current Leaf, captain Mats Sundin.
While it pains author Mike Leonetti, the man behind Maple Leafs Top 100: Toronto’s Greatest Players of All Time, he recognizes the glare of the obvious.
“If you look at the history of the Maple Leafs, you can clearly and easily divide it into two halves,” Leonetti said. “The first 40 years were excellent – 11 Stanley Cups, 19 appearances in the final. That’s almost one Stanley Cup final appearance every other year.
“The next 40 years, there have been no appearances in the Cup final and with the exception of perhaps five or 10 years, it’s been pretty much a disaster.”
Leonetti, who handled the writing of the 100 biographies of the legendary Leafs along with longtime Leafs beat writer John Iaboni, put together an expert panel of 12 veteran Leafs watchers to determine the list, utilizing Leafs followers from the newspaper (Lance Hornby, Frank Orr, Milt Dunnell), radio (Howard Berger, Doug Farraway) and television (Joe Bowen, Paul Hendrick, Mark Askin, Frank Selke, Harry Neale, Paul Patskou, Bill Watters) business and admits he was a little bit surprised at the player who topped the list, former Leafs captain Dave Keon.
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