If you’re looking for one book on Toronto Maple Leafs history, start with Eric Zweig’s The Toronto Maple Leafs: The Complete Oral History. If you already know the broad outline, read Damien Cox and Gord Stellick’s ’67 and Revivaltogether. The first follows a team that won the Stanley Cup as the Original Six era was ending. The second picks up eleven years later, when a different group of Leafs gave Toronto a playoff run worth remembering in its own right.
These five nonfiction picks also give you two ways to see the club from the inside. Conn Smythe remembers the years when he was building it, and Mats Sundin describes what it felt like to take over as its captain decades later.
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| If you want to read about… | Start with |
|---|---|
| A century of Leafs history in the voices of people who lived it | The Toronto Maple Leafs: The Complete Oral History |
| Conn Smythe and the Maple Leaf Gardens era | If You Can’t Beat ’Em in the Alley |
| Toronto’s 1967 Stanley Cup victory | ’67 |
| The 1977–78 playoff run under Harold Ballard’s ownership | Revival |
| The pressure of captaining the Leafs | Home and Away |
1. The Toronto Maple Leafs: The Complete Oral History by Eric Zweig
Best for a first trip through franchise history.
Zweig begins with the franchise’s roots in 1917 and carries the story through its first century. The appeal is in who gets to tell it. Players, coaches, managers and others who watched the club closely give you several ways to understand what mattered in any given era. The book spans generations, from Syl Apps to Darryl Sittler to Mats Sundin.
This is the pick for someone who knows the names from banners and highlight reels but wants to place them in the same story. It also gives you a way to choose your second book. If you find yourself lingering over the people who ran the club, go to Smythe. If the championship years are what hold your attention, go to ’67.
Explore Zweig’s Leafs oral history in paperback.
2. If You Can’t Beat ’Em in the Alley by Conn Smythe with Scott Young
Best for seeing the early Leafs through the eyes of the man who helped build them.
Smythe helped shape the franchise and oversaw the building of Maple Leaf Gardens. His memoir gives those early decades a point of view. A team history can explain why a new arena mattered to Toronto. Smythe’s account lets you see the building and the club through the priorities of the person making the decisions.
This is a good one to read alongside Zweig. When Smythe remembers an era he helped define, ask what a player or someone in the stands might remember differently. The memoir’s value is in hearing how Smythe understood his own influence.
Look for If You Can’t Beat ’Em in the Alley on Amazon.
3. ’67: The Maple Leafs, Their Sensational Victory, and the End of an Empire by Damien Cox and Gord Stellick
Best for understanding what made the 1967 Stanley Cup win unusual.
Toronto beat the Montreal Canadiens in the spring of 1967, just before the NHL expanded from six teams to twelve. Cox and Stellick follow the mix of aging veterans and younger players who pulled off the win. They also show what it meant to win at the end of a league setup that had been familiar for a generation.
Leafs fans hear the year so often that the season itself can feel like shorthand. The book gives it back some suspense. Montreal was the opponent, Punch Imlach was behind Toronto’s bench, and the team had a championship to win before anyone knew how long that spring would loom over the franchise.
Find the 2004 Wiley edition of ’67. See the NHL’s Stanley Cup winners by season.
4. Revival: The Chaotic, Colourful Journey of the 1977–78 Toronto Maple Leafs by Damien Cox and Gord Stellick
Best for discovering a Leafs team that deserves more attention.
Darryl Sittler, Lanny McDonald and Börje Salming give this account of the 1977–78 Leafs a very different cast from ’67. The season’s best reason to pick up the book is the playoff series against the New York Islanders. McDonald scored in overtime of Game 7 to send Toronto through. That moment is worth knowing even if you can already recite the club’s championship years.
Read this right after ’67 to see how much changed in eleven years. The league had grown, Harold Ballard owned the club, and another generation of Leafs had earned a big spring moment. The two books make a better pair than either one would with another broad franchise history.
Explore Revival on Amazon. See the NHL’s Game 7 playoff records.
5. Home and Away by Mats Sundin with Amy Stuart
Best for understanding what it takes to become the Leafs’ captain.
Sundin takes readers from growing up in Sweden to being drafted by Quebec and arriving in Toronto in a trade that sent fan favorite Wendel Clark the other way. That detail gives the Toronto chapters their tension. Before Sundin could become one of the faces of the franchise, fans had to get used to seeing him in the place of a player they already loved.
Pair this with Smythe’s memoir if you want two sharply different views of the same institution. One tells the story from the side of a man building a team. The other follows a player who had to earn his place in a team with decades of history behind it.
Explore Home and Away on Amazon!
Which Maple Leafs book should you read first?
Pick Zweig if you want to know how the eras fit together. Pick ’67 if you want one season you can follow from the inside. If you already have a shelf of Leafs books, Revival is the one I’d put at the top of the pile. It gives you a reason to go back to a spring that tends to get lost when the story jumps from the Cup years to the Sundin era.
For more hockey reading, see our Rachel Reid reading order for the fictional side of the sport.
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