I went with the names I could come up with off the top of my head. Feel free to nominate others.
15 year contract for Rick Dipietro.
Allowing His Satanic Majesty to remain GM for a 10-year reign of lunacy.
10 year contract for Alexi Cash-in.
Firing Neil Smith and promoting backup goalie to GM.
15 year contract for Rick Dipietro.
Allowing His Satanic Majesty to remain GM for a 10-year reign of lunacy.
10 year contract for Alexi Cash-in.
Firing Neil Smith and promoting backup goalie to GM.
Need I say more?
Ballard's worse moments:
Quote:
In April 2003, a woman publicly identified only as R.M. filed suit against Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Ltd., claiming that Ballard had sexually abused her over a period of eight years. The abuse was said to have started in 1963 when she was 10 years old, and to have continued until she was 18. Her uncle had been a painter at the Gardens, and R.M. said she didn't come forward sooner because Ballard had threatened to fire him if she had. She sought damages of $2 million. The suit was settled in March 2006 for an undisclosed amount
The list of dick-ish things that Ballard did was long, but, this one takes the cake.
Honestly, the things that he did reads like it was out of a cheesy movie:
-In August 1979, to make room for private boxes, he had Foster Hewitt's historic broadcast gondola dumped into an incinerator.
-When the NHL decided to put surnames on sweaters, Ballard refused, citing program sales. After being forced to put names on the jerseys, he did, by putting blue names on blue jerseys and white names on white, making them unreadable. Later threatened with a fine, he backed down and put the names in the opposite colors.
-Angered (or maybe jealous) by Conn Smythe's success with the club and his inability to bring a Cup to Toronto under his sole ownership, Ballard sold all of the Cup banners that had hung from the rafters of Maple Leafs Gardens for years.
-Early in his tenure, Ballard had imprints of his hands and feet placed in concrete with brass lettering beneath centre ice, which severely vitiated the quality of the Gardens ice.
15 year contract for Rick Dipietro.
Allowing His Satanic Majesty to remain GM for a 10-year reign of lunacy.
10 year contract for Alexi Cash-in.
Firing Neil Smith and promoting backup goalie to GM.
Ballard by a country mile.
He was an awful, totally incompetent owner in hockey(he didn't want Europeans in his formation, even if they were talented and skilled,it's an example)
and an very disgusting human being( but that's another story, though..)
Because of him, the Leafs organization were going downhill
and were also one of the worst teams in the league.
After the glorious sixties, by his actions, he regressed the whole
organization and made the Leafs an laughing stock. He chased
great players like Sittler because he did not like them. Lanny McDonald
left this team too. He elevated imcompetence to a art form.
This is clearly the worst period of the Leafs history.
and Ballard contributed largely to this situation.
Wirtz preferred to screw the players, at least financially.
Ballard did a worse job as an NHL owner then Wirtz but Wirtz was more of a crook then Ballard.
Ballard tried to screw the TD Bank out of $25,000,000 back when nobody in the NHL made $1M, thats worse IMO.
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