Section 90 Row A Seat 6.

I can still remember the day like it was yesterday when a friend asked me if I would be interested in sharing some Leaf season tickets. 

Jim had joined my Bulls Doublerink rec team after we decided to recruit a couple of new players. My friend Paul who was already on the team had brought Jim out insisting that he could help our team. Jim was not a very good hockey player, but over time he grew on me like mould on a damp basement wall and he became a good friend. Back then Jim was dating a girl named Donna who for whatever reason she always reminded me of Canadian Juno and Grammy award singer K.D. Lang. 

Anyways, Donna’s grandfather had passed away and he had been a Toronto Maple Leafs season ticket holder since the Gardens opened back in 1931. Back in the early 80's Maple Leaf Gardens would never allow any season ticket holder to sell or hand over the rights to Leaf tickets. The Gardens always maintained complete control over who received season tickets. The waiting list for tickets was very long and was in excess of ten years. 

I oughta know because I was on the list.

Jim told me that nobody in Donna’s family liked hockey or the Leafs. Because Donna was dating Jim who just happened to love the Leafs, he could use the tickets without the family having to inform the Gardens that the original ticket subscriber had passed away.

Jim told me they were grey seats and they were on the front row right at center ice. At first I never wanted to commit to sharing the greys with Jim because they were often referred to as the nosebleed seats. On a few previous occasions I had already sat in the upper corner greys and I never really cared much of those seats. For me the greys were always a last resort just like standing room tickets were.

The first game I attended with Jim, I absolutely loved the seats. They were not just great grey seats, but they were great seats. 

Period. 

The seats were in section ninety on the west side facing the benches row 'A', seats six and seven. On that first night my seat would be number six. They were at a perfect vantage point with amazing sightlines of the complete ice surface. Sitting on the front row also meant we had the advantage of the railing and a bit more legroom. The seats were absolute dead center and were directly under the historic Gondola where Foster Hewitt, Bill Hewitt, and now Bob Cole called the play-by-play to Leaf fans right across Canada. Those grey seats were also cheaper by almost half the price than the seats directly in front of us, the back row of the greens. For the most part the greys were made up of the working class diehard Leaf fans who had to pay for their tickets themselves.

There was no corporate money up there.

The fans were a run-of-the-mill assortment of oddballs. From George and his referee shirt to the elderly frail sisters who attended every home game together. There was the strange little grey haired lady who for years sat right behind me and always had an empty seat beside her. We later found out it was reserved for her husband who had passed away ten years earlier. There was the elderly lady who sat on our row, she was always munching on snacks. She had apparently attended every home game at the Gardens since it opened. The couple who sat beside us and always showed up with subs and cans of pop that we dubbed the picnic people. Greg the punk rocker hairdresser sat in seat five a single season ticket right beside us. He loved the Rangers and his all-time favorite player was Rod Gilbert. 

When I look back at that assortment of Leaf fans, I was proud and happy to have sat with them because I was one of them. The greys was where the real diehard fans sat.

After a couple seasons of Jim and me splitting the tickets, Paul also began to share a third of the games. It only seemed natural since had it not been for Paul bringing Jim out to play with the Bulls, I would never have met Jim. When I left Collegiate Sports, Jim was hired to work at the Yorkdale store where I had worked with Paul. Perhaps if I had never left the store when I did, Jim and Paul might never have met either. 

Besides, Paul like Jim and me was also a lifelong diehard Leaf fan.

We usually got the two sheets of tickets in our hands around mid-September. The first pick for myself was always the Edmonton Oilers game and my guarantee that I was going to see Gretzky, sometimes on his one and only visit to Toronto. Jim and Paul would always choose the Montreal game since the Habs like the Oilers would only visit Toronto three times every two seasons.

Once all the games were divided, each of us held our own stack of upcoming Leaf triumphs and heartaches. The three of us always traded individual games amongst each other and we each kept a half dozen or so games that we could take other friends or our wives to. For the most part though there was two of us three were in attendance at the majority of all Leaf home games. Playoff games would be a different story altogether. If and when the Leafs were in the playoffs, two of us three were always there, no exceptions. We each got an exhibition game that none of us really wanted, but it was mandatory that season ticket holders pay full price for all three home exhibition games. 

We also established free parking over at the Queens Park press lot. From there it was just a fifteen minute brisk walk to the Gardens back door on Wood Street. If we wanted to feel the electric atmosphere on some of the warmer game nights we would simply add an extra ten minutes to our walk. We then walked down towards the always crowded Carlton Street where we entered through the main doors right under the Gardens historic marquee. On many nights when the weather was at its worst the walk was almost unbearable, but I can never recall ever parking in any of  the expensive lots right near the Gardens. Besides, we were always parked far enough away by the time we got to our cars, the postgame traffic jam had disappeared into the night. It would be just a quick jaunt down University Avenue to the Gardiner Expressway westbound.

Some of my fondest memories were on the game nights driving eastbound along the busy Gardiner Expressway listening to the pregame show on the radio. The setting sun would be glistening off all the glass paneled downtown skyscrapers as we got closer to our York Street exit. The traffic was always heavy, yet it always seemed to be moving. It was as if a large asphalt conveyor belt was taking us right up to Maple Leaf Gardens.

Between the regular season and if we were lucky playoff games, about thirty or so visits a season for me to the Grand Ole Lady on Carlton Street. I just loved visiting Maple Leaf Gardens every time I went there. Eventually after the 1997/98 season we would lose the privilege of using the tickets and the Gardens would close its doors for good the following season on February 13, 1999.

For me sharing those grey seats for fifteen seasons with Jim and Paul will always conjure up so many great memories. Memories that I will always cherish for the rest of my life.