Please rename the arena ‘ The Gardens’

Toronto’s talk radio hosts got a break from their usual fare this week — how to get rid of Kathleen Wynne, Bill Morneau’s small- business tax grab, is Donald Trump even sane — to address a more fundamental matter, the sale of naming rights to the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Anything to do with the Leafs is a big issue. Last year was a winning season, a rarity amid the dismal plane of Leaf failures, and the city is already girding to pour impossible pressures on the young rookies who brought it about. The ACC has been their home since February 1999. The acronym stands for Air Canada Centre, but everyone calls it the ACC. Once a new naming deal takes effect a year from now, however, the ACC will become Scotiabank Arena.

Or, to be more precise, it will become Scotiabank Arena as far as Scotiabank is concerned. For the fans who sell out every single Leaf game, and have since the dawn of time, it will likely remain the ACC for years to come, perhaps longer than they can even remember what ACC means.

Scotiabank is paying $ 800 million for the rights, or $ 40 million a year for 20 years, which is reportedly 10 times what Air Canada paid. Evidently the airline didn’t reckon it was worth the extra money to keep a name that doesn’t actually mention the company. For that kind of loot, Scotiabank can call the place whatever they want, though one would think that a bank valued at a hundred bazillion dollars, based on its latest earnings report, could afford a marketing division capable of producing a more original, not to say catchier, appellation than Scotiabank Arena.

It’s not like it trips off the tongue, as ACC does. Or even BMO Field, where the local soccer team plays, and which is pronounced Beemo. Maybe it will get shortened, to Scobank or something equally innocuous. And forgettable. It’s an opportunity lost, and yet another entry in the long decline in sports palaces with character, like Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field, Maple Leaf Gardens …

The Chicago White Sox now play at Guarantee Rate Centre, which sounds like a cheque- cashing place. It used to be U. S. Cellular Field until the rights changed hands. New Orleans’ NBA team plays at the Smoothie King Centre, which is just down the bayou from the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

Mercedes at least had the wit to incorporate the stadium’s old name into the new one, realizing people would call it the Superdome anyway. Most s ponsors aren’t that quick. The new Las Vegas NHL team will play at T- Mobile Arena, off Toshiba Plaza, at the corner of Park and Sinatra. Frank, presumably, got his naming rights free.

The c o mmon t hread among corporate naming is soullessness and interchangeability. Miami’s Marlins baseball team played at a stadium known as Pro Player Park, Pro Player Stadium, Dolphins Stadium, Dolphin Stadium, Land Shark Stadium, and Sun Life Stadium until the gods took mercy and the team moved to the brilliantly-named Marlins Park. It’s about the only thing about the stadium that wasn’t engulfed in scandal, but nonetheless. The Detroit Red Wings played at the Joe Louis Arena for 38 years. Everyone called it The Joe and knew what it meant; now they’ll play at Little Caesars, and what will that be, The Slice?

Toronto is not unfamiliar with name changes. The Toronto Blue Jays played at the SkyDome from the time it was built in 1989 until Rogers bought the building in 2004 and named it after themselves. “SkyDome” might not have been the most scintillating sobriquet possible, but it was chosen in a public contest that attracted 150,000 entries. It’s been the Rogers Centre since 2005, though no small percentage of Torontonians still refer to it as the SkyDome.

Which brings us back to the Scotiabank Arena. The bank (which some of us still call Bank of Nova Scotia) also owns naming rights to the Saddledome in Calgary, which during its 34 years has been known as the Olympic Saddledome, the Canadian Airlines Saddledome and the Pengrowth Saddledome. The bank was wise enough to join its name to the one Calgarians overwhelmingly use. Which raises the question of why it didn’t follow a similar recipe in Toronto.

No, I’m not suggesting they call the place the Scotiabank ACC, amusing as that might be, but the bank missed an opportunity to both identify itself with and celebrate the hockey team and its history by letting pass the chance to christen it Scotiabank Gardens, echoing Maple Leaf Gardens, the original Leaf palace, which is now home to a grocery store and a rink named after a developer. The Leafs played at the Gardens for 68 years. They’ve never won a Stanley Cup anywhere else. The Gardens, Scotiabank or otherwise, speaks to Toronto history.

It would have been a great name. Fans would have loved it. Scotia bank boring arena? Just like every otherboring arena?

Nah.

EVERYONE CALLED IT THE JOE AND KNEW WHAT IT MEANT.