Sorry Maple Leafs Make Lots Of Money

TORONTO - Another day in the life of the Toronto Maple Leafs, sorriest franchise in professional sports.

In the morning comes a report that the club's best defenseman, Al Iafrate, has demanded a trade. Then a player whom the Leafs swapped the day before balks at going to his new team, jeopardizing the deal. On the radio, talk-show callers demand the head of General Manager Floyd Smith.

Meanwhile, a nasty sideshow continues in an Ontario courtroom, where black-robed lawyers argue over who should own the Leafs after last year's death of their crusty owner, Harold Ballard. The case pits Ballard's lifelong business cronies against his children, whom he once termed ``the three reptiles.''

At night, the Leafs are raked at home, 9-3, by the Buffalo Sabres. The winning goal is scored by a player Toronto traded to Buffalo a month earlier.

``The underwear was clean and we didn't tear the jerseys,'' Leaf Coach Tom Watt says afterward. ``That's the most positive thing I can say. It was a tough game.''

In reality, it's been a tough generation for the Leafs. They haven't had a winning season since 1978-79, and haven't won the Stanley Cup since 1967, when the National Hockey League still had six teams.

This season's Leafs, about 20 games under .500, have the second-worst record in the NHL. If they finish last, however, they will not receive the top prize of the draft - Eric Lindros, 17, the Ontario phenom. The Leafs traded their first-round pick last season for a journeyman defenseman, Tom Kurvers, who since has been shipped to Vancouver for center Brian Bradley.

The Leafs fired Coach Doug Carpenter in October. Now, the talk is that Watt's job is not secure. Bob Plager, who coached the St. Louis Blues' Peoria farm club to 15 straight victories, was asked recently whether he was interested in taking over in Toronto.

``Are you kidding?'' Plager said. ``Coaching that team is like having a window seat on the Hindenburg.''

The current season was supposed to be much different.

Toronto entered October with optimism, based on a .500 finish in 1989-90 and a nucleus of young players. And, for the first time in 20 years, the Leafs started a season without the intrusive influence of Ballard, who died last April at age 86.

``He was always the big excuse,'' said Gord Stellick, a former Toronto general manager. Said Paul McNamara, a retired chairman of Maple Leaf Gardens: ``History stopped when Harold took over.''

It is difficult to overstate the negative impact of Ballard, who combined the worst traits of George Steinbrenner, Charlie Finley and Robert Irsay.

Ballard was meddlesome, hiring and firing 13 coaches and six general managers during his tenure. Once, he impetuously axed Coach Roger Nielson and then realized he had no one to coach the next game. After promising reporters that a ``mystery man'' would take over, he asked Nielson to go behind the bench with a bag over his head and pull it off at the opening whistle. Nielson refused.

Ballard was insulting. In 1982, he termed the franchise's all-time top scorer, Darryl Sittler, ``a cancer.'' He blamed newfound Christianity for the slow start of Laurie Boschman, who was then traded and scored almost 200 NHL goals. He termed American players ``college sissies'' and referred to Europeans as ``wimps.'' When angry, Ballard would tear a player's photo off the Gardens walls.

Ballard was cheap. Until his death, the Leafs had the slimmest scouting staff in the NHL. The locker rooms were the worst in the league and there was no weight room. Ballard gave the team trainer's job to the man who repaired the engines on his yacht. The joke around the Gardens was that the players' knees deteriorated but their boats stayed in perfect shape.

However, Ballard was, perhaps above all, a savvy businessman. He was among the first owners in sports to see the moneymaking potential of luxury boxes, attaching 67 of them to the Gardens rafters. He shrunk the size of seats, enlarging the arena's capacity from 13,000 to 16,200. He also tore down a two-story mural of Queen Elizabeth, which hung behind one goal, replacing it with a few hundred seats. ``She's not paying us for that space,'' he scoffed at critics.

Ballard's personal life was often more entertaining than his hockey club. He was estranged from all three of his children. His last years saw an ongoing soap opera starring his companion, Yolanda MacMillan, who was 36 years his junior. The two never married, but MacMillan changed her last name to Ballard.

Close to a year after his death, Ballard's shadow still looms over the Leafs. The big top may have folded, but the circus continues.

In a Toronto courtroom, Ballard's son is fighting for the right to control the Gardens and the Leafs. Bill Ballard, 48, contends that Harold Ballard stole the inheritance of his three children and invested their money in shaky business deals.

Harold Ballard cut his children out of his will, leaving the Leafs and the Gardens, valued together at more than $100 million, to charity. The estate is now run by a three-man trust composed of Ballard's longtime business buddies, who have seven years to sell off the assets.

``My dad once told me that he would run the club from his grave,'' Bill Ballard told the court. ``And that's what he's doing.''

The head of the trust is Donald Giffin, a Canadian sheet-metal magnate who, at 76, seems more of a caretaker than an active director of the franchise. ``To be honest, it's not something I have a lot of background in,'' said Giffin. ``But there's harmony around the building. Our earnings have increased. Every enterprise we've undertaken has been financially successful.''

Giffin has also tried to restore reminders of the Leafs' glorious past.

Under Ballard, none of the team's 11 Stanley Cup banners hung from the rafters, but Giffin ordered them unfurled. And while most of the former stars were unwelcome under Ballard, Giffin built an alumni lounge and helped form a Leafs Legends team, featuring Frank Mahovlich, Dave Keon and Ron Ellis.

``History should be important to a team that started in 1917,'' said Bob Stellick, Gord Stellick's brother and the Leafs' director of business operations. ``In past years, everyone left here with acrimony. Now, we're trying to create more of a sense of family.''

Still, some things never change. With the Leafs at the bottom of the NHL, management remains reluctant to spend money.

Asked whether he was willing to pay the going rate for top talent - such as the $1.2 million St. Louis gave Brett Hull - Giffin said: ``We don't need to do that. Brett Hull is in a region that needs a super player to develop the market. We're blessed that we've got a wonderful market here. We don't need to move into salaries like that - we fill the house every night.''

Almost as an afterthought, he added, ``Of course, we still want to put the best possible product on the ice.''

Indeed, the Leafs are blessed by their market, a hockey hotbed in which 49 percent of all English-speaking Canadians are within driving distance of the Gardens. All games are on free television, and, as poorly as the Leafs play, most games are sold out. The club's profits may be the highest in the NHL.

And, too, Toronto fans are remarkably uncritical - at least by some other cities' standards. On this night, against Buffalo, few catcalls were heard when the Leafs quickly fell behind, 3-0. ``Fans here never give up on you,'' said left winger Vincent Damphousse, the club's top player this season. ``In other towns they'd be booing.''

The Toronto media are not so docile. Three daily newspapers cover the Leafs with the passion New York tabloids reserve for the Yankees. Two papers give each player a game-by-game report card. ``There's no place to hide in this city,'' said Smith, the general manager, who has been dubbed ``Sleepy Floyd'' by the local media, which also refer to the club as the ``Maple Laughs.''

Many of the barbs stem from Smith's move last year in which he sent his 1991 first-round draft pick to New Jersey for Kurvers. At the time, with the club headed for a playoff spot, it didn't seem like a bad idea. But now that the Leafs have fallen - and the pick could net Lindros, arguably the best junior player in Canada since Mario Lemieux - Smith is being skewered.

The general manager has defended the trade, saying, ``It put us in the playoffs last year. I'd do it again.''

Still, as the club sinks to the bottom of the NHL, Smith appears to be making short-term moves designed solely to lift the Leafs out of the basement - thus avoiding the embarrassment of watching the Devils pick Lindros.

Smith has recently remodeled the club with an age movement of older, slower players who will likely provide little help in the future. Three over-the-hill journeymen were acquired by sending two future draft picks to the Quebec Nordiques. The deal seemed geared to ensure that the Nordiques, not the Leafs, finish last - thus getting Lindros.

``The Lindros thing is on everyone's mind,'' said Gord Stellick. ``Right now, it seems that no one cares where the Leafs finish, as long as they don't finish last.''

But won't Toronto fans grow angry if management deals away the future?

``Toronto fans supported this team through three decades of Harold Ballard and two decades of bad hockey,'' said Stellick. ``They'll continue to hang in there.''