Postcard: Air Canada Centre

TORONTO -- The NHL's Original Six barns are gone now, replaced or modified by multipurpose arenas fitted with luxury suites, catwalks, sky bridges and loading docks that are large enough to accommodate the fleet of haulers that move monstrous rock shows from city to city.
Historic Maple Leaf Gardens still stands in downtown Toronto, fashioned into retail space and an arena for Ryerson University. Its once prime tenant, the Toronto Maple Leafs, moved south a few blocks on Bay Street to Air Canada Centre in 1999, joining the Toronto Raptors of the NBA.

On Thursday, four of the eight teams taking part in the World Cup of Hockey 2016 practiced at Air Canada Centre, which will host every game of the tournament, which starts Saturday.
The Maple Leafs took a good deal of their rich history when they moved 17 years ago and unpacked it in the new building. I'll always take time to wander the concourses and the ice-level corridor outside the locker rooms, where a glorious gallery of photos is displayed. Somehow they always look fresh.

The gentle poke at the Maple Leafs is that color images don't exist of their most recent Stanley Cup victory, which came in 1967. In fact they do exist, a few vintage shots displayed here of a couple players with the priceless trophy.
Air Canada Centre has been dressed to the nines for the World Cup, with signage and banners.

The arena store, Real Sports Apparel, usually wall-to-wall with Maple Leafs or Raptors merchandise, now is packed from floor to ceiling with World Cup jerseys, clothing and a variety of items bearing the logos of all eight teams and the tournament itself. Should the World Cup run to its Oct. 1 limit, store staff will have one day to strip it down and redress it with Maple Leafs product for the Oct. 2 NHL preseason game between the Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens.

There have been concessions made for the World Cup. What usually is a media dining and workroom has been converted into a locker room for Team Europe. It's in the corridor leading to this room that you'll find a fabulous 1960s photo of Maple Leafs coach Punch Imlach, sipping a glass of champagne, his feet on a table beside the Stanley Cup, with "No practice tomorrow" chalked on a blackboard behind him.

There are incredible images of the Maple Leafs' greatest names in many places, including one of defensemen Tim Horton and Allan Stanley with the Stanley Cup.

But if there is one shot that, to me, defines the heart and soul of the Maple Leafs, it's the grainy, sepia shot of a toothless, suspender-wearing Dave Keon, hugging the Cup in the moments following a 1960s triumph. There is a sense of joy and relief on his face at the end of another ferocious battle for hockey supremacy.

Like many of the arenas that have replaced the vintage, long-gone buildings that were home to the Original Six, Air Canada Centre is a pleasant mix of what is needed for the modern game while also giving a nod to the history of a storied franchise that is turning the corner into its centennial season.
And you'll find the most wonderful things if you look down. Really, is there a better piece of hockey Canadiana than a steel Molson bucket that's filled with pucks serving as a doorstop?