Ontario Senior A League (1966-1967)
National Lacrosse League (1968)
Eastern Lacrosse Association (1969)
Tombstone
Born: 1966
Folded: Postseason 1969
First Game:
Last Game:
NLA Championships: None
Arena
Maple Leaf Gardens
Opened: 1931
Marketing
Team Colors:
Ownership
Owner: Toronto Maple Leafs (Harold Ballard & Stafford Smythe)
Background
Morley Kells launched the Toronto Maple Leafs lacrosse team in the mid-1960’s. Kells, a former amateur player himself, was an advertising executive by trade. He brought a promoter’s sensibility to the Leafs, which he coached and part-owned. On August 6, 1967, Kells staged an exhibition between his Leafs and an amateur club called the Detroit Hornets at Olympia Stadium, home of the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings. The game was intended to showcase the sport of box lacrosse for Wings owner Bruce Norris. Norris agreed to invest in Kells’ concept of a professional Canadian/American box lacrosse league to begin play in the summer of 1968.
The owners of the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens also got involved. By early 1968, Kells had a four-team Eastern Division consisting of NHL-affiliated clubs in Detroit, Montreal and Toronto plus an independent club in Peterborough, Ontario. A group of four amateur lacrosse clubs from British Columbia agreed to form a Western Division and play an interlocking schedule. The Western clubs, one of whom played its home games in Portland, Oregon, did not have NHL investment.
1968
The National Lacrosse Association began play on May 5, 1968. The lax Leafs played a 38-game May-September schedule at Maple Leaf Gardens. Morley Kells remained as coach. The team disappointed, finishing last place in the four-team Eastern Division with a 13-25 record.
Ron MacNeil led Toronto in scoring with 63 goals and 26 assists. Graeme Gair was a closed second with 87 points.
The End
The National Lacrosse Association finished its only season of operation in October 1968. The New Westminster Salmonbellies were the league’s first and last champions. In early 1969 the league’s Eastern Division collapsed when Detroit pulled out of the league in late February. Efforts to hold the league together with new expansion teams came to naught. The western clubs returned to regional amateur play. The Maple Leafs joined the amateur Eastern Lacrosse Association in 1969, but appear to have ceased operations at the end of the 1960’s.
Trivia
Maple Leafs top score Ron MacNeil was inducted into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1992.
Links
“Rough? Right. That’s Lacrosse“, Eric Hutton, MacLean’s, August 1, 1968
##
