43 Years of Maple Leaf Frustration: 1981-82 Season

During the Leafs' training camp in September 1981, Imlach suffered a third heart attack, which was followed by quadruple bypass surgery. Harold Ballard once again appointed himself as interim manager and let it be known to the media that Imlach's poor health meant that "he's through as general manager." Imlach was never officially fired, but when he tried to return to work in November, he found that his parking spot at Maple Leaf Gardens had been reassigned and Gerry McNamara had been made acting general manager. Imlach never returned to work and his contract was allowed to expire. McNamara made a name for himself in the organization as a scout in 1973 when he returned from the World Hockey Championships to report on a star defenseman from Sweden, named Borje Salming.  McNamara somehow kept his job for nearly a decade despite the team never breaking the 70 point barrier.

Mike Nykoluk returned as coach. He had been recruited from the radio booth which appeared to be the standard approach to filling openings in the organization - look for down the hall for someone cheap and a little desperate.

At the start of the season the Leafs would put into the newly created Norris Division uner realignment and away from Boston and Buffalo in the Adams Division.  At the time the awful Detroit Red Wings and Winnipeg Jets were Norris occupants. Yer the Leafs slipped even further in the standing finishing with only 20 wins and 56 points. That was good for 19th overall in the 21-team league.  In comparison, the 2009-10 version of the Leafs had a miserable season but still scraped together 30 wins.

In January of 1982, Darryl Sittler eventually quit the team, asked to be traded and was.  Rick Vaive, who along with Bill Derlago was acquired from Vancouver for Tiger Williams and Jerry Butler in one of the few good trades that Imlach made, was named captain. Vaive was also one of the few bright spots in a dismal decade by being the first Leaf player to score 50 goals in a season and repeating the feat the next two years.  Today that would be a monster season but in 1981-82, when scoring was up considerably, that was only good for 5th in goal scoring. The monster season was had by a guy named Wayne Gretzky who scored 92 goals.