I spent spring break in Toronto in March 1988. On March 19, I (legally) scalped a ticket to see the Toronto Maple Leafs host the New York Rangers on a Saturday night on Hockey Night in Canada. My seats weren't great: far back at centre ice. The fans around me were happy to see an American at the game. They shared with me how horrible Harold Ballard was as an owner. Some of them were waiting for Ballard to die.
I knew very little about Ballard and his stint as Toronto Maple Leafs owner. After you see Offside: The Harold Ballard Story, you will understand why Ballard was so hated by the Maple Leafs faithful.
The picture of Ballard is as a con artist: good at marketing, lousy as a human being. He lucked out into being the Maple Leafs owner. If you want to be liked, you would work hard to be a good owner: hire competent people to bring great hockey players to Maple Leafs Gardens.
Harold Ballard didn't want to be liked. And it showed.
He especially didn't like you if you wanted to be paid more. Dave Keon, Roger Neilson, Darryl Sittler, Lanny McDonald, and Rick Vaive.
The details would be too much to believe, if this was a fiction story. Ballard went to jail: supposed to be in jail for 3 years but only served a year. Ballard hired a boat mechanic to be the Maple Leafs trainer.
You start to realize those fans were understating the damage Ballard did to the franchise.
We do see other sides of Ballard. He did make significant charitable contributions, mostly to the Special Olympics. Ballard also bought the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 1978.
The Tiger-Cats went to 3 straight Grey Cups from 1984-1986, finally winning the Grey Cup in 1986. That year, Ballard called his own team a bunch of overpaid losers. After the win in the 1986 Eastern Final, Ballard said "You guys may still be overpaid, but after today, no one can call you losers."
The CFL is a lot of things but overpaid isn't one of them. Hamilton businessman David Braley bought the team on February 24, 1989, before Ballard passed away.
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Jason Priestley guides us through a really depressing view of a much hated human being. He humanizes the man as much as one can but your blood pressure will go up watching what happened.
Things are so bad that while Montréal Canadiens fans might be tempted to laugh, the sadness is so prominent that only the most hardened Habs fans could laugh at how bad he was.
The theme we keep hearing throughout the film is that Ballard didn't care about the hockey part. He wanted to make as much money as he could. He did. The family fight over the money is a small part of the documentary but gives some insight.
Spending money could have made him more money. The 1980s were likely to still be dominant by the New York Islanders and the Edmonton Oilers even if the Maple Leafs were better. The lack of success is what was the dominant NHL city has ties to the team's fate since 1993, the last time the team went to the conference finals.
The Toronto Maple Leafs haven't won the Stanley Cup since 1967 and haven't even made the Stanley Cup finals since that fateful year.
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Offside: The Harold Ballard Story is available on Crave in Canada and Tubi in the United States.
video credit: YouTube/Photon Films and Media
photo credit: Offside: The Harold Ballard Story
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