Leafs: Where do NHLers come from part II

There's been a bit of gurgling lately over the fact that, for the first time ever, the Leafs don't have a player from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) on their roster.

I don't see why this matters. John Gardner, president of the Greater Toronto Hockey League, isn't happy about it. He tells the Toronto Star he's bothered that the Leafs don't have great players from the GTA, such as Jeff Skinner, Tyler Seguin and John Tavares. Hey, me too Mr. Gardiner, but you might want to pick a few other names to lead with next time. Anyone who understands even the most basic fundamentals of professional sports franchises and draft rights shouldn't bemoan the fact that these kids play for other teams.

Matt Stajan and John Mitchell were the last GTA-born player on the Leafs.

I'll pause to let their loss to the organization sink in for a minute.

Mitchell is currently in the AHL and Stajan's biggest contribution to the organization was being part of a package traded for Dion Phaneuf.

If one does a smidge of research - say taking 10 minutes to look at the rosters of each NHL club - one will discover that the Leafs aren't alone in not having any local boys on their roster.

According to the rosters posted at NHL.com of the 30 teams in the NHL, only four - Buffalo, Montreal, Washington and Winnipeg - have a local kid playing for them (five if you count the Rangers Tim Erixon being from Port Chester).

The Leafs, just like their fellow Canadian teams Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver are without local representation - although somehow these facts didn't find there way into that article over the Star (that's a head scratcher).

When it comes to players, I don't care where they come from or where they end up. What matters is whether they contribute to the success of the Maple Leafs. With that perspective, I guess that's why I don't write filler over at the Toronto Star.

Where do NHLers come from - Toronto edition

Last night I caught a tweet by Toronto sports journalist Michael Grange (on twitter the eponymous @michaelgrange). He asked when was the last time the Leafs had a Toronto-born superstar on their roster.

To be honest, I thought it was a bit of a leading question and responded by asking when was the last time any NHL club had a Toronto-born star (then I wondered what the answer to that question is).

Hockey-reference (an amazing resource) has a database of NHL birthplaces. I pulled up the data for Ontario, dumped it into a spreadsheet and started to sort. I eliminated all the players who played before 1981 (thought 30 years was a nice round number for the data). That was the only exclusion I made.

I ended up with about 150 players in the last 30 years. Thanks to Grange and another twitter user @KeithTalent5000, I realized the data needed another go-round as the database separates out many of the constituent parts of Toronto – Willowdale, Mimico, Weston, North York, Scarborough, etc.

Factor in these constituent parts and the spreadsheet expands to 209 Toronto-born players in the NHL since 1981 (and I may have missed some others – I’m Toronto born and raised and I had to google Mimico to find out it’s part of the city).

Of those 209 Toronto-born NHLers:

• 132 managed a career of 40 games or more;
• 106 played more than 100 games; and
• Seven managed to score 0.80 ppg and of those only three scored at a point-per game clip over their career (Dale Hawerchuk, Adam Oates and Paul Coffey).

In looking at the spreadsheet, I don’t think the pertinent question here is who was the last Toronto-born star on the Leafs. I think the real question is, why isn’t the most populous city in the country producing more NHL caliber players? (Or, how does Toronto compare, on a per-capita basis with the other major centres in Canada?)

As for stars on the Leafs, I don’t claim to speak for most Leaf fans, but I don’t care if they hale from Moscow, Ontario or Moscow, Russia. I’ll take talent on this squad no matter where it comes from.


The spreadsheet is here.