History of Save The Leafs
This website was started back in 2005 when I decided I needed a voice to express my concern for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Back then I blamed all our problems on ownership and management. The Teachers Pension Fund owned the Leafs and they weren't interested in icing a winning team, they just wanted a good return on their investment. So they hired Richard Peddie to run the Leafs and he went out and hired a rookie GM to navigate the waters of NHL in the new salary cap era. He proved to be useless and Peddie kept him around for 5 brutal years.
So I started this website. My goals were simple, encourage MLSE to take some of that money they could no longer spend on the team and spend it on off ice personel like a good GM, a good coach and a good scouting department. I also wanted to encourage the teachers to sell the Leafs. I figured there are hundreds of thousands of Leaf fans in Ontario, the next time the Teachers went on strike, I was going to use this website start a campaign to pressure them into selling.
The website never took off but I wrote a post encouraging Leaf fans to pressure the teachers into selling on the message board http://apps.savetheleafs.com/Forum/message/index.cfm?topicGroupID=5140&topicID=4520&messageID=0&start=0&last=0 it seemed to attrack some attention, it had 8000 views in a few months.
At the very least, this website became a place for me to vent my frustrations but I I hardly ever updated it.
Then the teachers sold the Leafs, we hired Brendan Shanahan and I truly believe we are in good hands for the first time in years. I posted an open letter to Phil Kessel when he was traded that got some attention and then I walked away. I figured I could trust the Shanahan and Dubas to save the Leafs, but I missed having the outlet for my thoughts. These days my frustrations are no longer with ownership and management, now I am setting my sites on Leaf fans. |
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