It’s usually “Home Sweet Home” and “The Long and Winding Road” for professional sports teams, as most are prone to have more success on the ice, field or court in the friendly confines of their home venue than on the road.
Count the 2013-2014 Toronto Maple Leafs in that regard with a 24-16-1 home record and 13-9-2 in the lockout-shortened 2013 season. The home victory has evolved into a feel-good scenario with the Leafs gather at centre ice to salute the fans as the game-night staff unfurls a large banner and one of the stars of the game is interviewed over the public address system.
It’s the perfect way to conclude any home game for any Toronto fan.
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But that hasn’t been the case to start the 2014-2015 season, with a woeful 1-4-0 home record. Three of those losses — to Pittsburgh, Detroit and Boston — were especially dismal efforts by the Blue and White. The team’s struggles at the Air Canada Centre haven’t been what the doctor ordered for a fan base that remains upset with how the Leafs turned a “sure” playoff position into a complete and total collapse on the ice for the home stretch of last year’s regular season.
It’s a fan base that remembers this kind of feeble effort in Toronto’s last home game last season (a 4-2 loss to Winnipeg), in which the Leafs played poorly and captain Dion Phaneuf was taken to task for his post-game comments, saying the effort was there when it was just too obvious to Leafs fans that it hadn’t been. Remember, at this point the team still had some hope to make the playoffs before heading on the road for the final three games of the regular season. That terrible effort at home, for all intents and purposes, put the final nail in the Leafs’ playoff coffin.
Add in that home loss last season, and Randy Carlyle’s squad is 1-5-1 in its last seven regular-season home games and 3-10-1 in their last 14 after finishing 2013-14 with a 2-5-0 record in the final games at the ACC.
I worked with the Leafs for many years when they were a struggling team in the 1980s. Even with bad overall records, we by-and-large had more success on home ice than we did on the road. Long before the advent of analytics as a statistical tool, there was the common sense equation: if you are going to stink, stink on the road. I can say with a very small amount of pride, we did that more often than not.
Struggling at home broadens the scope of the team’s issues. The frustrated crowd is quick to turn on the home team and that fuels the pressure on the players. This is the challenge the Leafs face right now. Their season hasn’t been great, but it hasn’t been horrible. However, the play at home has made the perception worse.
Over the past few decades there has been less of a disparity overall in home and road records. One reason is travel has been upgraded to be less taxing and draining both physically and emotionally on the players. The other is the venues.
Wendel Clark gave me a great line years ago: “When I first came up in the league there were all these very different venues like Chicago Stadium, Philadelphia Spectrum, Boston Garden and many more that were unique”, Clark said. “Now if you blindfolded a player at centre ice and took his blindfold off, he would have a hard time telling you what arena he is in.”
The newer NHL arenas are all-event, cookie-cutter type venues and definitely lack in distinctiveness and uniqueness.
Home ice is still the place where you have to play “good” hockey to please the paying, loyal faithful. Air Canada Centre is a hard building to really get rocking. The Leafs only home win — against Colorado — was a fabulous game and one of the rare evenings the crowd’s energy made the building rock. It was that kind of game.
Toronto’s fans certainly have no problem venting their negative energy during the abysmal home efforts. The mocking chant of “Let’s Go Raptors” has replaced the “Argooooos” chants of a few years ago.
The Maple Leafs have to rediscover that home-ice advantage, otherwise Air Canada Centre will likely be dark — once again — for the Stanley Cup playoffs.