Toronto Maple Leafs

The Toronto Maple Leafs are a hockey team based in Toronto, Ontario, and are often considered to be the quintessential Frustrating Toronto sports team. The second oldest franchise in the NHL, they have not won a Stanley Cup since 1967, and are known for finding a new soul-crushingly creative way to fail every single year. Currently, they are working on the "don't get anyone's hopes up because we're rebuilding" plan, which all things considered, isn't really that bad considering what fans have had to deal with lately. The Leafs were actually quite good in 1993, and had a memorable cast of characters including Wendel Clark and Doug Gilmour, which explains how they managed to hook then impressionable pre-teens and future Poliners/associates Phil Howell, Liam Peacock and John Hillier into their cruel game for years to come.
==History==
===The old days===
The Leafs won a whole pile of championships way back in the day, before all their players moved on to the Johnny Bower retirement castle to write long-winded memoirs. They built a promising young team in the 70s with Darryl Sittler, who scored a franchise record 928 points, all of them in a game against Boston; Wendel Clark, then going under the name "Lanny MacDonald"; and Borje Salming, the highest profile Swedish player in club history. Team owner Harold Ballard ruined that team, and saw to it that the team would never be good again until the 90s.
===The Early 90s===
Coached by professional badass Pat Burns, led by God among men Doug Gilmour and the second coming of Wendel Clark, and finished off by goaltender Felix Potvin and the best defense ever, the early 90s Leafs were awesome, and were prevented from winning the the Stanley Cup by a cosmic error. Then everything fell apart when they traded Clark, Sylvain Lefebvre and Landon Wilson, to the Quebec Nordiques for Garth Butcher and Todd Warriner. John Hillier and baby Jesus cried.
===Everything after===
The Leafs tried to make a go of it several times in the 21st century under coach Pat Quinn, but ultimately couldn't find the number one centre they needed to play between Jonas Hoglund and Lonny Bohonos. After the NHL lockout in 2005, the team was a shadow of it's former self, so new general manager John Ferguson Jr. set about making it even worse. (Really) old GM Cliff Fletcher was brought in to fix the mess, but the team's veterans, known as the Muskoka 5, impeded his efforts when they rallied around assistant captain Bryan McCabe and refused to waive their no-trade clauses. Finally, in 2008, Fletcher fired everyone, and iced an AHL team as a means of punishing Tomas Kaberle. The team played their most heated games in this period against their bitter rivals the Vancouver Canucks, where former Leaf Kyle Wellwood played.
===Bryan Burke===
Is pretty truculent, if you ask me.