War On Logos #11: Can’t Be-Leaf It
I might be taking a huge, huge risk here, but for this edition of War on Logos, I’ll be ripping on the logo of… shock horror! An Original Six team! (Oh wait, I already did once before without coming under fire for it, so I guess I’m good to go!)
Well, OK. I’m not going to be ripping on it par se, because I don’t personally see what exactly is wrong with this logo. It’s not me that hates it, but it’s the Toronto Maple Leafs’ very own fans that do not seem to like this logo much at all. Why? Well, keep reading to find out!
Design-wise, I can’t spot what’s wrong with it. There’s nothing particularly stupid about the way it looks, nor is there really anything for me to poke fun at (unless you count the technically grammatically incorrect “Leafs”, which I believe is referring to the single leaf on Canada’s flag). It’s modern-ish, the font works well, and overall the logo is very simple but effective, if in my humble opinion a bit boring. So really, the way the logo has been designed is not necessarily the reason why Leafs fans hate it.
Since I myself am not a Leafs fan, nor do I personally know any, I’m not entirely familiar with the team and how they are run, nor do I really care. But a little peek around the internet has made me discover that, no matter how much the fans love the team, how much money the team makes or how many consecutive sellout crowds this team gets, the Leafs’ fanbase has not been happy for the longest time. Strangely enough, or not, the years of disappointment began sometime after the last time Toronto won the Stanley Cup in 1967, not too long before this logo was introduced.
The team won the Cup with a similar, but different logo, and sometime before team owner Stafford Smythe passed away, the Leafs changed their logo to something almost identical to what they use now (the current design was introduced in 1982), and shortly after Smythe’s death, his shares were bought by a man named Harold Ballard, making him the new owner of the team, and thus marking the beginning of an era that Toronto fans look back on with great displeasure.
After many years of enduring Ballard’s mismanagement of the team, he too passed away in 1990, thus ending his ownership of the NHL franchise. But Leafs fans still haven’t been too happy, as since then they’ve only made the playoffs in ten out of eighteen seasons, have not made the playoffs at all since the Lockout ended, and at the time of writing they are off to the worst start in franchise history.
The fans, it seems, have had enough, and recently a campaign has launched in hopes of changing the Leafs’ logo, and meanwhile, another fan has even gone so far as to auction his own loyalty to the team on eBay.
As the above campaign suggests, many Leafs fans agree, and I will agree too on this matter, that Toronto should switch back to the logo below – currently in use as an alternate logo – as their primary instead. The fans of the team feel that it’s reminiscent of better times, while I myself feel that the logo is just better in general.
So there we have it: the current logo of the Toronto Maple Leafs is hated not for its design, but for the years of mediocrity that the Leafs have had since their last Stanley Cup win.
I’m Wildwing64, and I declare War On Logos.