Tampa fans pivot from Leaf chirps to charity
Five games into a first-round playoff series against the Maple Leafs, Tampa Bay Lightning fans were planning their playoff exit strategy.
Toronto arrived in Tampa for Game 6 with a series lead and a deciding game on home-ice as a safety net. Leafs fans might not have been confident, even with the odds in their favour, but fans of the two-time defending champions had a plan in the works in case their Stanley Cup luck ran out.
“I just wanted to get something going because Toronto is a city that hasn’t had any kind of taste of success from their beloved Leafs, but the fans keep coming back for more,” organizer Michael Mahoney told the Star. “It’s an incredible fan base and anyone who pays attention to hockey knows that.”
Mahoney, from Umatilla, Fla., about two hours north of Tampa, made a suggestion on the Lightning Reddit page that, if Tampa Bay lost in the first round, they should “act like champion-level fans and be a base that makes our boys proud even in the worst of circumstances.” That post quickly turned into a collaborative effort in the comments that also spread to other platforms, with both Lightning and Leafs fans suggesting different charities and even offering up a template for overly-specific donation amounts.
“$19.67 donations?” asked one user, a reference to the year 1967, the last time the Leafs won a Stanley Cup. “Kinda backhanded but I don’t know what else works.”
The idea to help the Toronto community stemmed from watching other NHL fan bases shed the sore loser mentality and replace it with charitable acts. Vegas Golden Knights fans banded together and donated pizzas to Dallas homeless shelters after the Stars knocked them out of playoff contention at the end of the season. With the movement growing rapidly and the belief their team could come back from the brink, Lightning fans changed course — win or lose, the group would donate to Easter Seals, a Toronto-based charity focused on helping children with physical disabilities.
“As a thank you to Toronto for having great fans and for the team providing great entertainment, I propose we donate in increments of $19.17 in honor of their inaugural year,” read the fundraising post, which was posted a day after Tampa’s Game 7 win and has raised over $400 so far. “Alternatively, maybe donate $20.23 as a good friendly gesture of reminding the city that there is always a next year.”