SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER
Home-ice tradition slowly slips away for host of reasons
When Andy Rielly plans a trip to see his son Morgan play for the Maple Leafs he prefers to scope out a long weekend. It’s a hefty trip to Toronto from the Rielly home in Vancouver. Identifying a pair of games a day or two apart — anchored around a Saturday night game at the Air Canada Centre — provides the framework for a worthwhile stay.
So when the elder Rielly recently scanned the early part of the schedule for possibilities, he was unenthused by the offerings. Saturday home games, a traditional Maple Leaf staple, are surprisingly scarce in the opening few months of the season. This Saturday, the Maple Leafs are in Montreal. Next Saturday they’re in Ottawa. Two weeks hence, on Oct. 28, they play at home against Philadelphia — the lone Saturday date at the Air Canada Centre in a six-week stretch in which they play Saturday road contests in St. Louis, Boston and Montreal.
This year the Leafs don’t play a single Saturday home game in the month of December. They’ll play just 11 all season, tied for the lowest number in franchise history in a schedule made up of at least 60 games, according to an analysis of historical schedule data by the Star’s Andrew Bailey. This is the first campaign in the Hockey Night in Canada era — which stretches back to 1952-53 — in which the Maple Leafs will play more Saturday nights on the road (12) than at home (11). They’ll play nearly as many home games on Monday and Wednesday, 10 apiece.
“My dad’s trips to Toronto are based around those (Saturday home) games . . . He was not impressed,” said Morgan Rielly. “That’s strange. I don’t know why that is.”
An NHL spokesperson, citing information provided by league scheduling guru Steve Hatze Petros, said in an email that the scarcity is a product of a few factors.
“My dad’s trips to Toronto are based around (Saturday home) games . . . He was not impressed.” MORGAN RIELLY ON LEAF SCHEDULE
They include fewer than normal available Saturday home dates at the busy Air Canada Centre; more Saturday requests from other clubs; and an instance or two in which the Maple Leafs decided a Saturday home game coming off a road trip wouldn’t be in the team’s best competitive interest.
Whatever the reasons, it appears to be a new normal in the centre of the hockey universe. A year ago, when the Leafs also played 11 Saturday home games, some chalked it up to a schedule compressed by the World Cup of Hockey and newly-introduced bye weeks, and to the presence in Toronto of the world junior championship, which gobbled up arena availability for two-plus weeks.
But Saturday home games have been slowly disappearing for a while. As recently as 2006-07 the Leafs played 19 of their 41home games on Saturday. By Rielly’s rookie year of 2013-14 the number was down to 15 — a month of Saturdays more than currently on offer. There were 14 a season later. And 12 a year after that.
As a Toronto tradition wanes — and at least some of the club’s legend was built on the romantic allure of the Saturday night pilgrimage to a hockey mecca — there are those who’ll tell you it’s a shame.
“I love those Saturday night home games,” said Nazem Kadri, the veteran centreman. “To me, it’s more fun. It’s not like it changes the way I play or changes the way anyone else plays, but it’s just a bigger stage. You feel like more is on the line, even though it’s not.”
Said Zach Hyman, the second-year forward: “Saturday night in Toronto is a special night.”
Others don’t claim as much of a day-specific attachment.
“Toronto is such a good city to play in, it doesn’t matter if it’s a Saturday. Traffic is less — that’s the only good thing (about playing at home on Saturday),” said Leo Komarov, the veteran forward.
For the local team, there’s another good thing about playing on Saturday. It’s a historically successful night, and not simply at the cash box. In the 70 seasons going back to 1947-48, the franchise’s overall winning percentage, home and away, is higher on Saturdays than it is on any other day of the week. It’s even better on Saturdays at home, where the Leafs have won 53 per cent of games over the time period.
“It’s obviously the best day of the week, I think,” Kadri said.
Moaning about the schedule’s quirks is a regular complaint heard ’round the sports world. At times during his tenure, Leafs head coach Mike Babcock has blamed the tough stretches in Toronto’s 82-game grind on the team’s status as a ratings draw co-owned by a pair of telecommunications behemoths, Bell and Rogers.
“Our schedule has a little bit to do with TV, if I’m not mistaken,” Babcock said in 2015.
GM Lou Lamoriello has said in the past he would make it a priority to endeavour to reduce Babcock’s calendar-related angst, specifically the number of back-to-back games on the slate. While the league ultimately sets the schedule, teams have considerable input. Last season, the Leafs played 18 sets of back-to-back games. They’ll play 14 this season. It’s conceivable that achieving that reduction sacrificed a Saturday home game or two.
Scott Moore, president of Rogers Sportsnet and the overseer of Hock- ey Night in Canada, said the whereabouts of Toronto’s Saturday games “has nothing to do with TV,” even if, he said, road games typically add to production costs.
“We have in our contract a number of Leaf games on Saturday. We don’t have any input, nor do we care, whether they’re at home or on the road,” said Moore in an interview.
Moore said the geographical location of a Maple Leafs game “doesn’t change the ratings.” A home game draws the same number of eyeballs as a road one.
There was a time when the Maple Leafs played the majority of their home games on Saturdays. For the bulk of the 1950s and ’60s, when the league featured six teams and the regular-season schedule ran 70 games, the Leafs routinely played 24 games at Maple Leaf Gardens — about 69 per cent of its 35-game home schedule. In the 1970s and ’80s, as the league added more teams and more games, the percentage of Saturday home games still hovered above 50 per cent.
Toronto fans hankering for that throwback feeling will appreciate the tail end of this season’s schedule. Each of its final five weekends will see the Maple Leafs playing where they’re famous for playing — on home ice on Saturday night.
“I think the players get a special feeling for those Saturday home games,” said Rielly. “You get excited to play on that stage.”