It’s strangely easy to forget Tim Leiweke in Toronto, even as his influence remains. Leiweke wasn’t just a CEO, he was a personality, connected and serious, and when he got here he tried to push Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment from a drifting money-making operation into the realm of real ambition. He claimed to have planned the Maple Leafs’ championship parade in his first interview in the job.
In his two years here, Leiweke reeled in Brendan Shanahan and Masai Ujiri, and Raptors franchises, and a decade later he has at least half-succeeded — more than half, if you remember how the pre-Shanahan Leafs were a shambling wreck. Shortly after that, the Blue Jays tried their own version of the Leiweke play, in their own inimitable way. And here we are.
And so you get a city whose regular-season performance has been admirable, and whose playoffs have not kept up. The Jays are sinking further and further into sub-mediocrity in their shined-up stadium. The Leafs continue their Sisyphean existence: They push the stone to the playoffs and then watch it flatten them on the way back down the hill. The Raptors won, of course. But that and the high standards of the franchise are part of what has made their recent descent so jarring. They’re not just supposed to be better than this, they were.
About The Author
Leave a Reply