One month into the new NHL season, and this much is obvious: the Toronto Maple Leafs are a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, dressed in the league’s silly new jerseys. The Leafs are scoring more often than your younger sister, but they’re also leaking goals at a potentially historic rate. They’ve lost two games by 7–1 final scores, but they’ve also got an 8–1 win and consecutive 4–1 road victories against consensus preseason favourites......

Picture [your favourite sports franchise here] signing a 'local' kid to patrol left field, to sit back on the blue line, to punt the ball or to guard the key. Picture kids from local peewee and little league teams streaming into every game, waving pennants and wearing jerseys, with the aim of seeing the local-boy-made-good ply his trade on his own field of dreams... Seems like kind of a nice idea, right? A way to......