Look, I don’t think any Toronto Maple Leaf’s fan will lie to you and say they were not happy when #88 finally landed in town and dawned the Maple Leaf’s blue and white. Perhaps it was because he was actually happy, perhaps it was because so many people already had gone out and bought Lindros jersey’s a few years ago when he was rumored to be coming to town (don’t feel bad, those same people have Gretzky jerseys in blue and white as well).

So I naturally have to take exception to Adam Proteau’s open letter to Eric Lindros in the October edition of The Hockey News.

Right from the get-go, you can pretty much tell where Proteau is going with his letter.

“Enjoy it while it lasts, Eric Lindros. Get a nice, heaping helping of Leaf Nation’s adoring masses, their cheers as they cascade around you, their battles to see who gets to leap into the palm of your hand first. In the NHL’s most volatile market, the good times may not last the duration of your next bathroom visit, let alone the week.”

So while Proteau will admit that he understands that indeed Lindros is having a good year in Toronto (though he fails to mention the load he had to carry with Mats Sundin out of the line-up), his overall point is not so much aimed at Lindros as it is the fact that in Toronto, we are bound to use, chew up and spit out our hockey stars at an alarming pace. In this regard he says, “What usually happens is, Maple Leafs stars get traded, injured, booed out of town, scapegoated and alienated as the situation requires.”

In my mind, perhaps under the Ballard ownership era, there was a time when the Toronto Maple Leaf alumni were mistreated and/or forgotten, but to talk about Wendel Clark, Doug Gilmour and Borje Salming as your examples of athletes who left Toronto under poor terms is just plain wrong. Again as Proteau writes, “Think Wendel Clark and Doug Gilmour; one betrayed by his body and an ultra-competitive style, the other felled in Calgary after a knee-on-knee hit destroyed his hope of one last championship run with the team he almost single-handedly delivered one to. Think Larry Murphy, Lanny McDonald, Darryl Sittler and Borje Salming, and remember the previous owner of this franchise actually rationalized a way to deny Gretzky a place in Leaf lore. They chew you up and spit you out in this town.”

The same argument could be made about any city in which they have a sports franchise with a die-hard fanbase, an expectation of winning and an organization with tons of revenue (and therefore prior to the salary cap, lots of $$ to spend). You think that Nomar felt loved when he left Boston? Did Roger Clemens have a nice exit there? What about the way the Yanks suddenly felt Andy Petite was no longer the guy they wanted in their lineup (or weren’t willing to shell out the bucks for him anyway).

To compare Toronto’s hockey culture to that of the passion and love for their team that Yankees and Red Sox fans have would be fair, but to try and convince me that guys like Wendel Clark and Doug Gilmour are not thrilled with the time they spent in Toronto is just plain off. Yes Clark and Gilmour both spent years in Toronto where they were loved and then both left to play elsewhere, but is that decision on the Leafs completely? Did they not bring back Clark to let him play just one more shift in the Blue and White? Look around the Air Canada Centre on a Saturday night, the #93 (Gilmour) still is found all over the building. We chew up and spit out our stars here? I think not!