I rode my bike — ok, my E bike — down Lansdowne Avenue to a friend’s house — ok, a friend’s shed — to watch Game 3 of Leafs-Lightning. I stopped at the corner of Lansdowne and Wallace— the cover image of our December issue was shot there — fitting my foamy headphones over my ears, spinning through my digital library for something to spirit me south. It didn’t take long for me to start crying. My throat tightened and my chest heaved and my eyes got heavy and wet. It was a confluence of everything. Music and sports — okay, music and Leafs — are my twin supernovas of emotion, and combined, they press on almost every significant touchtone in my life, apologies to my kids and Sandy the rescue dog. On November 26th, 1992, Rheostatics sang “O Canada” at Maple Leafs Gardens before Leafs/Nords, wearing the tuxedoes we would wear in my wedding party the following day. The Leafs won that night, but would they win on this night? Max Webster’s “On the Road” — one of the beautiful, moving, searching touring songs — found my ears. Music and sports don’t have the right answers, but they ask the right questions. Was I happy? Were the kids happy? Was the dog happy? Everything ok at work? I decided that it was, that they were. And that’s why I wept on Lansdowne Avenue.
The Leafs in spring are an obvious seasonal image, and yet I took the early daffodils springing from the soil as a sign of strength and immediacy and natural lust for life, and that, this year, the team might actually make it through the first round of the playoffs, something they haven’t done since 2005. These days, the sun is out and the skies are warm and they’re also playing baseball again, and with this turn of the season, all music sounds as if shot from a confetti cannon, three feet high and rising. “On the Road” yielded “Modern Love” which yielded some Frank Black and then some LCD Soundsystem. While riding I felt aloft, like that ET kid with the alien smiling from his basket. I passed houses with blue flags, cars with blue flags, bikes with blue flags. Elderly Portugese men on Dundas smoked on porches and stoops waiting for the game to start. The city leaned forward on its seat. Game 3. The Leafs were in Tampa Bay, where, in “Thunder Alley” outside the rink, men and women sat on lawn chairs in long shorts watching a big screen. Okay, fine, hockey is everywhere, for everyone. But this evening, I hoped it was mostly for us.
I swung into the parking lot of the Lansdowne No Frills to dry my eyes.. Everyone seemed to be either carrying beer or ice. LCD gave way to “Subdivisions” which gave way to “Poets” which gave way to “More Than a Feeling,” a song that poet Darren Wershler-Henry has called the greatest of the 20th Century. I begin dreaming. The old men went to their TVs and ice was unbagged into coolers of beer. I arrived at the shed to find my friends there. Were they happy? It was spring, and the Leafs were in the playoffs. I decided that they were.
The game started and the Leafs were terrible. Tampa out-hit and out-shot and, okay, out-chanced them. We ground our knuckles into palms and sweat and swore. 1-1, then 2-2, then, after some guy named Raddysh made it 3-2 Lightning, we all leaned forward at the same moment and lit joints, the shed growing blue with smoke. Another thing about important games and their emotional span: they take you up, they drop you down, one after the other. Why could the Leafs seem like they didn’t care when we all cared so much? The third period started, one poor shift giving way to a worse shift. More grinding, more smoking. Time fell to three minutes, then two. And then William Nylander found himself in the corner with the puck on his stick. He shot it at the Tampa goalie.
The crease was shared by Ryan O’ Reilly, the gap-toothed centre from Varna, Ontario. In 2010, we lost Paul Quarrington, my friend and mentor, who wrote the book that most impacted my life, King Leary. Ryan O’Reilly was the player who reminded most me of Paul’s invention — little Percival Leary — and seeing him alone in the crease made me feel as if Paul had conjured him there. It also reminded me that maybe what Toronto — a team formerly known as the St. Patricks — needed to find its rare magic was more Irish, and having two players with “Reilly” in their name — the other is defenceman Morgan Reilly — it seemed like a decent theory. O’Reilly flicked at the puck, and it dropped behind the Tampa goalie. 3-3. 40 minutes later, Reilly, the defenceman, won it in overtime. We jumped and sang and everyone in the neighbourhood did, too. We finished our beers and I left the shed. I rode north this time. The city was dark and quiet. The light on my bike guided me home.
great piece. hope the Leafs can do it tonight (begrudingly says the diehard Canucks fan)