And You Thought YOUR Owner Was Bad!: The Twisted Tale of Harold Ballard

Oh boy. You know, a decade ago, I joined Twitter, and a few of my first followers were wrestling fans and fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs. I remember when the Leafs clinched a playoff spot during that lockout-shortened 2012-13 season, and how happy those fans were on Twitter, because it had been nine years since the Leafs qualified for the Stanley Cup Playoffs. I also remember one or two of them telling me about the Leafs under the ownership of Harold Ballard. All I knew back then was that Ballard wasn't a good owner. If only that was all.

I've learned a lot about Harold Ballard in the last two years, and again...oh boy. It's a story I can't help but hear and read over and over again. It's similar to how NASCAR fans watch the crashes. They're chaotic and bad, but you can't help but turn away. Fair warning: this will definitely trigger some older Leafs fans who actually lived through this; just know it's not my intention. Here it is: the tale of Harold Ballard's tenure with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Harold Edwin Ballard was born in Toronto on July 30, 1903, and it was in 1930 that his foray into hockey began, managing and coaching several small teams during his time as a member of the National Yacht Club. His time with the Toronto Maple Leafs organization began in 1940, when then-Leafs head coach Hap Day recommended Ballard to run their minor team, the Toronto Marlboros. Ballard served as president and GM of the Marlboros, who would win the Memorial Cup in 1955.

During that time, Ballard's business relationship with Stafford Smythe began, and in case you're wondering, yes, it's that Smythe--actually, related to him. Stafford Smythe was born Conn Stafford Smythe; the son of Conn Smythe, the legendary Leafs owner whose name is memorialized on the trophy that's awarded to the MVP of the entire Stanley Cup Playoffs. The pair became co-owners of the Leafs in 1961, and during that time, the team won three straight Stanley Cups from 1962-64, and added one more in 1967.

Two years after the team's last Cup, Ballard and Smythe were charged with tax evasion, though they were allowed to remain on the board. John Bassitt, the third head of the ownership group, sold his shares to the duo in September of 1971, and just six weeks after that, Stafford Smythe suddenly passed away at the age of 50. Following the younger Smythe's passing (which happened nine years before his father passed in 1980), Ballard won a battle with Stafford's family over his shares, and in 1972, he became the sole owner of the team.

At the time, the Leafs' 1967 Cup (their 13th) was a close memory. Little did they know.

Ballard was charged with 49 counts of fraud and convicted of 47 of them, and was sentenced to nine years in prison. He only ended up serving three of those years, and after his release, he boasted that the prison was more like a club, having steak dinners and drinking with the guards, even wearing one of their uniforms. Oh boy. It was during Ballard's time behind bars that the Leafs went out and signed Börje Salming, and it had to be done during that time because Ballard hated European players. Salming, of course, went on to become one of the greatest players in Maple Leafs history.

Also at the time Ballard's tenure began, the NHL had a rival in the form of the World Hockey Association. Ballard was known to be cheap with his players; picture Scrooge McDuck without the charm, or Mr. Krabs with even less charm. He also never thought of the WHA as a threat, yet the Leafs lost several players to the WHA, including and especially their star goaltender, Bernie Parent. In addition, the players who stuck around, used the threat of heading to the WHA to get better contracts. Ballard despised the WHA because of this, mainly because he had to fork over more money.

Ballard's hatred didn't end there. He also had an intense hatred of the Leafs' longtime captain, Dave Keon, who had played for the team since 1960 and was the Conn Smythe Trophy winner during the 1967 championship run. Keon's contract ended in 1975, and Ballard couldn't wait to get rid of him, but still demanded money from him. He intentionally set the price so high that other NHL teams would be unable to match the offer, forcing Keon to head to the WHA's Minnesota Fighting Saints. They ended up folding, and Keon actually received an offer from the up-and-coming New York Islanders, but because Ballard still owned the rights, Keon was prevented from going to the team, and he ended up with the New England Whalers.

Of course, the leagues ended up merging, and because the Whalers were one of four teams who joined the NHL, Keon was back in the league. Even so, Ballard ruined Keon's career. At the time the Saints folded, the Isles were only three years away from becoming the dynasty we all knew about. Keon could have finished his career with a plethora of Cups to go with the ones he had already won. But because of Ballard, that didn't happen. Keon held a grudge for decades over what happened, and it was over 20 years until he mended fences with the Leafs.

I swear to you, what I'm saying is 100% true. In 1977, the Leafs hired Roger Neilson as their head coach, and in his first season, the team reached the Stanley Cup Semifinals, where they were swept by the Canadiens. Despite this, Ballard decided to fire Neilson during the following year, despite the players loving him. However, a couple of days later, Ballard relented and allowed Neilson to return, but under the following condition: he had to wear a paper bag over his head and be referred to as "the mystery coach." Naturally, Neilson refused to do that because, well, he's a sane and rational human being.

After Ballard ran Keon off, Darryl Sittler became the Leafs captain in 1975. He was drafted by the Leafs back in 1970, and during the first few years, Sittler and Ballard got along. Then Sittler became heavily involved with the NHLPA, and his pro-union views set Ballard off. After the Leafs' playoff loss to the Canadiens in 1979, Ballard hired Punch Imlach, the former Cup winning coach of the Leafs, as the team's general manager, as well as an ally for Ballard against Sittler. The team was on the rise, but despite this, Ballard and Imlach wanted to get Sittler's goat so badly that they vowed to dismantle the team to undermine him. They couldn't move Sittler, though; he had a no-trade clause and his agent, Alan Eagleson, who was also the executive director of the NHLPA, demanded a half million to waive it.

So they were stuck with Sittler. However, they were not stuck with anyone else. Ballard knew full well that the Sittler was close friends with teammate Lanny McDonald, and in the ultimate definition of the saying "cut off your nose to spite your face," Ballard and Imlach traded McDonald (one of the team's best players) to the Colorado Rockies--the absolute worst team in the league at that time. The trade occurred on December 29, 1979, and after it was done, many teammates were pissed off. They trashed the locker room in response, and as for Sittler, he was so angry that he tore off the captain's "C" off his jersey. Ballard's response to that action: he compared it to burning the Canadian flag. Yeah...no.

Imlach attempted to trade Sittler to the Quebec Nordiques, but he suffered a heart attack (one of five he would have) before he could. This occurred in 1980, and after this, Ballard became the team's general manager in Imlach's place, and unceremoniously fired him a year later. As for Sittler, his captaincy was returned to him, but he was so fed up with the Leafs that he agreed to waive his no-trade clause, resulting in Sittler being dealt to the Philadelphia Flyers in the 1981-82 season.

Regarding the aforementioned saying I uttered, Ballard cutting off the Leafs' proverbial nose (McDonald) spited the team's face immensely. They barely reached the playoffs in 1980, doing so with a losing record, but after that, they would have losing records for the rest of Ballard's life. Meanwhile, McDonald played parts of three seasons with the Rockies before heading to the Calgary Flames, which would see him reach the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in 1986. The Flames were defeated that year, but three years later, the Flames returned to the Final and ended up winning the Stanley Cup, with Game Six being the final game of McDonald's career. After hoisting the Stanley Cup over his head, McDonald called it a career.

The list of Ballard's crazy actions definitely didn't end there. For one, he chucked Foster Hewitt's gondola into the incinerator to make room for the private boxes, despite the Hockey Hall of Fame pleading with Ballard to acquire the object. As part of his frugality, Ballard originally refused to follow a rule that the players names had to be on the backs of jerseys, as he wanted to continue making money on selling programs. He finally agreed, but he attempted to circumvent the order by placing the blue letters on the blue jerseys, and the white letters on the white letters, making them unreadable. Ballard was fined for this, and he ended up caving in and swapping the lettering.

Get this. So Ballard was intensely jealous of Conn Smythe. Yeah. He worked with the man's son, but he couldn't stand his father's success while Ballard himself couldn't get a Cup as sole owner. The victims of Ballard's insecurity: the team's 13 Cup banners. He originally used them to catch paint drips before eventually selling all of them. Syl Apps, a former Leafs captain who was part of the 1942, 1947, and 1948 championships, expressed his heartbreak over the disrespect shown to the banners, saying that the team worked hard for those championships, and it was terrible that they meant so little to Ballard. The Leafs weren't his only team; Ballard was also the owner of the Canadian Football League's Hamilton Tiger-Cats, who he referred to as "overpaid losers" before they won the Grey Cup in 1986. He even had the Tiger-Cats logo placed on the Maple Leaf Gardens ice. Oh man. The list of offenses also included numerous moments where Ballard made racist and sexist comments, which I will definitely not repeat in this story.

On April 11, 1990, Harold Ballard passed away at the age of 86 after a long battle of heart problems and diabetes. His passing came one day after the Maple Leafs won Game Four of the Norris Division Semifinals against the St. Louis Blues, which would be the only game they won--they lost Game Five one day after Ballard's passing. However, even after Ballard's passing, the notoriety continued. In March of 1997, it was uncovered that an underground sex ring operated below Maple Leaf Gardens, and Ballard knew about it. The victims of this were underage boys. Ugh.

It still amazes me how crippling things were for the Leafs under Harold Ballard. I've heard many stories over the years about bad owners, but Ballard definitely takes the cake...well, several of them. That man absolutely destroyed the Leafs for decades beyond repair due to his frugality, his arrogance, his insecurities, and his dictatorial conduct. The only thing he cared about was the good ol' Canadian dollar, and having as many as possible. And he pretty much burned down the Leafs in that quest for money, power, and to stroke his ego. The long Stanley Cup drought that the Leafs still have? That's all on Ballard. Yes, he's been deceased for 32 years, but the damage he did to this team, like I said before, is beyond repair.

You know how horrible the Ballard era was? Take a look at the photos of Darryl Sittler and Rick Vaive in this story. Take a look at the jerseys they're wearing. Seeing photos like that and others like it online and in archive footage is the only way we hockey fans will ever see those exact jerseys. The Leafs wanted to wash their hands of the Ballard years so badly, that they did away with those jerseys in 1992 (two years after Ballard's passing) and never even considered bringing them back as throwbacks. Those exact jerseys, while cool-looking, were part of an immensely toxic and tumultuous period for the Leafs, and they do not want to go back to that.

So recently, I heard that a movie was made about Harold Ballard. It's actually a documentary, and from what I learned, it hit the Whistler Film Festival on December 3, 2022, and will come out to larger audiences in 2023. The director of this doc? None other than Jason Priestley, Brandon Walsh himself. I have to see this somehow; the crazy saga of Harold Ballard continues to amaze me no matter how many times I hear it. It doesn't even sound real, but all of this actually happened, and all I, as a hockey fan, can hope is that the Leafs finally rise above the decades of damage committed by Harold Ballard.