A PROUD DAY IN LEAF NATION.
When it comes to professional hockey and the world built around it, obedience to orthodoxy tends to rule the day. Hilarious caricatures of swaggering chauvinism like Brian Burke and Don Cherry are held up as hockey's most cherished personalities.
So anyone else see Toronto Maple Leafs enforcer Wade Belak on TSN responding to reporters wanting to know how Leaf players felt about a new movie entitled "Breakfast With Scot" whose main characters are two gay men (one of who is supposed to be a retired Leaf) trying to raise a (possibly gay) kid in a homophobic society? How many other NHL enforcers do you see suggesting that critics of the film "get with the times" and comparing the struggle against homophobia to the civil rights movement and women's suffrage? How many other NHL teams do you see giving their stamp of approval to a film that flies in the face of professional hockey's traditionally moronic values? The answer is of course: none. This, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the many reasons why - despite the fact that MLSE is indeed a most laughable and pathetic ownership among laughable and pathetic NHL ownerships - the Leafs rule. It's called character.
We are Leaf Nation: Fragile. Inconsistent. Generally disliked and above all: righteous.