History
The AHL had a strong presence in Atlantic Canada in the 1980s and 1990s, largely due to the desire of several National Hockey League Canadian franchises to continue to pay players sent down to the minors in Canadian dollars, but by 2004 St. John's was the only remaining team in the region. The desire of the parent team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, to reduce travel costs and have a tenant for its Ricoh Coliseum resulted in the team's relocation to Toronto for the 2005–06 season.
The St. John's Maple Leafs were established in 1991 when the Toronto Maple Leafs moved its AHL farm team from Newmarket, Ontario, known as the Newmarket Saints, to St. John's, becoming the first professional ice hockey team in Newfoundland and Labrador. The team played their home games at the Memorial Stadium until 2001, when they moved to the Mile One Centre, where they remained until becoming the Toronto Marlies. The Newmarket Saints played from 1986 to 1991, after the Leafs' AHL franchise was established in 1982 as the St. Catharines Saints in St. Catharines, Ontario.
The Maple Leafs were very popular throughout their existence, and they made multiple appearances in the AHL Calder Cup playoffs (only missing the playoffs in 2000, 2003 and 2004). The team was in the Calder Cup finals in their inaugural season, losing 4–3 to the Adirondack Red Wings, but they won the semifinal round by earning the most points during the regular season out of the three remaining teams in the playoffs, the others being the Red Wings and the Rochester Americans. Their first season was the only time the team made it to the finals, and they never made it past the conference semi-finals round after that. They made subsequent appearances in the second round, losing 4–0 in 1993 to the eventual Calder Cup champion Cape Breton Oilers, and lost the second round in their remaining appearances, all of which were won by the conference champions for the season, losing 4–2 to the Moncton Hawks in 1994, 4–3 to the Hamilton Bulldogs in 1997, and 4–0 to the Bridgeport Sound Tigers in 2002. However, the team was the division champion for the 1992–93 and 1996–97 seasons, and won the regular season title for the 1993–94 AHL season.
On April 29, 2005, the Maple Leafs played their final game, Game 5 of the division semi-finals round of the playoffs against the Manitoba Moose at the MTS Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, losing 4-0. This was one week after the Maple Leafs' final home game (Game 2 of the first round), a 6-1 victory over the Moose, which was to be their final victory. It officially marked the end of 34 consecutive seasons of the AHL's presence in Atlantic Canada, which began in 1971 with the Nova Scotia Voyageurs in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Coincidentally, when the NHL's Atlanta Thrashers moved to become the second incarnation of the Winnipeg Jets, the Moose moved to Newfoundland and Labrador to become the St. John's IceCaps, becoming the first AHL team in Atlantic Canada in six years, making the final Leafs game one between an outgoing team and a future team both playing in the same city, in the same league. The IceCaps are currently the affiliate of the Jets.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)