Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
Photo by Little Dragon.
Mats Sundin is back—and frankly, we can’t figure out why.
Because if we were Mats Sundin, we’d have left the Toronto Maple Leafs ages ago. We’d have read one single letter to the sports editor of the Toronto Sun bemoaning the fact that a foreigner—a Euro!—could be captaining the Maple Leafs, and we’d have immediately gone someplace more...well, tolerant. If this were any other city, any other sport even, Sundin would be lauded as a genuine superstar. He’s the team’s best (and sometimes its only) offensive weapon, its undisputed leader, its one sure-fire future Hall of Famer. But in Toronto, where the Maple Leafs are given blanket coverage even when they’re not actually playing, Sundin gets scrutinized—often unfairly—by a media which depends on the team for attention. And in the Sun, which fancies itself to be the voice of Leafs Nation, readers are given a forum in which Sundin is generally dismissed as overrated, overpaid and—worst of all—bereft of the one quality which defines any real on-ice leader: heart.
The notion of “heart,” and Sundin’s imaginary lack of same, is never far from discussions of the Leaf Captain's merits. And more often than not, the argument boils down to a single point: Sundin isn't Canadian, and therefore can't lead. In the 2002 playoffs, for instance, when Sundin was sidelined with a wrist injury, Gary Roberts almost single-handedly willed the Leafs to the Eastern Conference Finals. When Sundin returned, the Leafs were eliminated—and Sundin's critics had a field day. This, they said, was proof positive that Mats Sundin wasn’t fit to be wearing the “C” in Toronto. Gary Roberts, they said, now there’s a real leader, a good Canadian boy, a player with (here’s that word again) “heart” in abundance. The fact that the Leafs' opponents, the Carolina Hurricanes, were simply the better team was hardly mentioned.
The trouble with heart, at least in the context of the NHL, is that it’s a red herring: it’s invoked as a legitimate critique of a player's merits, but it's usually a thinly-veiled excuse for exercising good ol' fashioned cultural stereotypes. It’s been well-documented that no European captain has ever led his team to a Stanley Cup victory; logically, then, Europeans aren’t fit to lead an NHL team onto the ice...right? What that statement actually means, however, is simply, "You're not Canadian, and therefore you're not worthy." It’s cultural protectionism at best, bigotry at worst.
Last December, with the Leafs mired in a slump and Sundin dealing with the aftereffects of a knee injury, the Toronto Sun published a letter to the sports editor which wondered, without a trace of irony: "Why do the Leafs keep this inept, mediocre second-line centre? And he isn't a leader, so why is he the captain? Get rid of Mats Sundin—it is a move that is long overdue. Funny how the team wins with Darcy Tucker when Sundin is off. I will become a Leafs fan once again when the team rids itself of Sundin. And, please, do not get any more inept Swedes—I have had enough with Borje Salming and Sundin." (Salming was so inept in his day that he was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame and is generally regarded as the player who spearheaded European involvement in the NHL.) These aren't isolated sentiments: the Sun regularly publishes missives written by people seemingly hell-bent on running Mats Sundin out of town. Some people apparently still haven't gotten over the fact that Sundin was acquired for Wendel Clark, one of the most popular players in team history.
Again, these attitudes are couched as a genuine discussion of a player's merits. They're not: they're horribly backwards, and it's astonishing that there are people, in the year 2007, who still think like that. We're assuming Sundin likes the attention: after all, it comes with the territory of being the most visible player on the most popular sports franchise in Canada. During the off-season, while Sundin was renegotiating his contract, the Sun's Steve Simmons—doing right by his Toronto sports media brethren by making a mountain out of a molehill—invented a possible career-ending injury for Sundin which threatened to sabotage the entire process. The issue blew over—much like Sundin’s well-publicized real estate dealings, also concocted by Simmons, from the previous off-season—but showed once again that Sundin, ten years into his tenure as the Toronto Captain, is still a lightning rod for attention. His team, meanwhile, is mediocre at best, and seems destined to struggle for a playoff berth again in 2007/08. And if we got wind of a single letter in the Sun that ripped on us solely on the basis of our nationality, we'd find someplace else to ply our wares.
Photo of Mats Sundin by Aaron Webb.
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There are two things you need to keep in perspective about the Leafs and Sun: I am not sure the type of person who buys the Sun READS it, and the Leafs have never won in my 38 year life!
Both fine institutions show that Torontonians will pay for any kind of crap. Maybe if, like me, they'd refuse, we'd get better.
After acquring Doug Gilmour, the best move Cliff Fletcher made as Leaf GM was dealing oft-injured and aging Wendel Clark for Sundin. Clark's skill diminished rapidly while he bounced from team to team, while Sundin became, and remains, the best player and leader of the Maple Leafs.
In a few weeks, Mats will become the highest scoring player in the long history of the Toronto Maple Leafs franchise. Sun readers will argue he's played more games here than current record holder (and Canadian-born) Darryl Sittler. But Mats has racked up all those points with a supporting cast that was far inferior to Sittler's team, and in an era where clutch-and-grab tactics and trap defences have ruled.
I hope the narrow-minded hockey fans of this town will finally come to appreciate Mats' stellar career here one day - hopefully long before #13 takes its rightful place hanging from the banners of the ACC.
Isn't this vilification of Sundin's critics a bit outdated? I remember reading an article only a few months ago in the Star that talked about how Sundin's been finally embraced by the city, and how he felt at home, etc. It was a nice article. I didn't care about the Leafs by then, but I did feel a little warmed by the fact that Sundin chose to stay here, rather than commanding a similar salary elsewhere.
The only other critic I can think of who might still openly disparage "European heart" is Don Cherry. Certainly, it's astonishing that *anyone* could hold opinions like this in 2007 ... but then again, there are people who also still believe in the inherent inferiority of blacks, Asians, Jews, women, and more. And they're much more louder, and much more populous.
Considering this criticism is mostly confined to one bombastic personality and the readers and writers of a paper that publishes a swimsuit edition, I think Sundin has gotten pretty far in this town, according to people who count.
Well written.
However, trying to attack the Toronto media when it comes to their coverage of the Leafs is pointless. The illusion of intelligent reporting has long since been abandoned in favor of the tabloid approach. Just about every Toronto newspaper columnist that covers the Leafs has about as much journalistic credibility as the hundreds of gossip rag "reporters" that follow Britney and Lohan around. They pander to the bandwagon yahoos while real fans seek out better sources of information online.
The joke is on anyone that still believes they can find true "news" within the confined of corporate controlled outlets.
Holy crap! If all you wanted to do was look down your nose at The Sun, just say so. To try and make a bigotry/racism issue out of it is a stretch, and to think this sort of thing only happens in Toronto is well, one of the reasons so many people hate Toronto in the first place.
We`re tame here compared to the treatment hockey players get in Montreal or say baseball players get in New York. It`s all part of the sports entertainment package.
Sundin has never taken a bold stance with management, and while some might see that as loyalty, it upsets me as a Leaf fan that the captain seems to be a pawn in the board's game. He's got the tenure to be able to get the fans on his side, but he doesn't seem to want to use that power.
As for the Carolina series in 2002, it was a case of the Patrick Ewing effect. Star player goes down, everyone steps it up, star player returns, and the team has a letdown. That being said, the Leafs were arguably the better team in that series and were unlucky to not make it to the final.
Sundin scored 1 goal in the final 20 games of last season; suffice to say, if he had produced, the Leafs would have gained that 1 extra point they needed to make the playoffs. Sundin, along with Andrew Raycroft, were the principle reasons why we did not make it. Sundin, for my money, has never been ripped on the basis of his nationality. It has been, rightly or wrongly, for not being a vocal leader in the Mark Messier vein. Peter Forsberg, a Swede, has never been questioned in this regard.
The criticism of Sundin for not having heart is ridiculous. For not producing, only marginally less. For not leading, perhaps there IS something to that, but I don't actually buy it.
However, with all that being said, and the fact that you're ripping on the Simmonds and The Sun, which is sort of like ripping on Fox News for futility, I think it IS time for Sundin to go.
Trade him while you can still get more than a new Zamboni driver for him.
Thanks for the comments, everyone. Some of 'em got me thinking, and I wanted to clarify/elaborate on a few things:
1. This wasn't an excuse to rip the Toronto Sun, which (as noted) is way too easy to do. That said, I'm still puzzled how a mainstream media source can allow itself to provide a forum for readers to articule genuinely racist sentiments. That's my main issue: couching bigotry as a legitimate critique.
2. I'm well-aware that the Toronto media isn't unique; I never said so, and I don't think I intimated as such. Boston still sets the standard as far as negative press coverage of the local teams is concerned...although if you *really* want to see it taken to the next level, read a British tabloid's soccer reporting. Really, there's nothing quite like it.
3. Back to the Sun. It's easy for *us* to dismiss its merits--but that doesn't change the fact that its daily circulation ranges between 200k and 400k, and that a lot of people think of it as "real" journalism. Saying, "Who cares, it's the Sun" is certainly convenient, but it doesn't negate the fact that people *do* read the paper and *do* take it seriously.
Again, thanks to everyone who took the time to come back at me--it's nice to know there are people beyond my girlfriend and me who read what I had to say, even if they didn't necessarily agree with it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have six hours of NFL football to watch. Happy Sunday!
There are three types of captain -
1. The captain is feared by his teammates who live in dread of letting him down
2. The captain who is so talented that teammates play harder in dread of leaving him down and being fingered as the reason why he never got a Cup
3. The captain who has 1+2.
Sundin is a good player - a great player actually but apart from Tucker it's hard to see anyone on the Leaf squad who cares enough to put themselves on the line.
Perhaps the letters page should not in fact be a forum for readers' views if they prove controversial. However, your sensibilities may too refined for hockey, period, if you think some fan's weariness with Swedish players amounts to "racist sentiments."
I don't know much, but I *do* know one thing: my sensitivities aren't too refined for anything, particularly hockey. Again: if people don't think Mats Sundin is a good hockey player, fine. But I do have an issue with people who criticize his (not to mention other players') leadership abilities strictly because of where they're from. That, to me, is racist sentiment. Having said that, roolb, I do agree with your point about the letters page being controversial; actually, with regards to the sports pages in general, there's probably no point in even running them if they're not gonna ruffle a few feathers, accidentally or otherwise. Who knows? Maybe I *am* too refined for all this. ;)
Most people would define superstar as someone who's been in the top ten in scoring more than once their entire career. Perhaps you're throwing around the platitudes a little loosely. Jagr, Thornton, Crosby, Ovechkin are superstars. Sundin is above average.