Hockey |

Tonight’s victory by the Leafs over Ottawa ensured that they would be involved in a playoff game sometime next month. Here’s a look back on the year 2004, the last time the Leafs made the playoffs:

None of our grade 1 or 2 students had been born (and even some of our grade 3s)
We still had only one class in each of grades 5-8.
Shrek 2 was the number one movie and Usher was the top selling album
Our 18 000 square foot Third Addition had not been built
KCS didn’t have social media sites…sometimes I feel it would be nice to go back to this time!
Current Leafs; James Reimer, Phil Kessel, and Jake Gardiner were in high school
We sent home our newsletters on paper in your son or daughter’s knapsack
Glenn Zederayko was Head of School
Elmo was the hottest toy on the market
The majority of students did not carry around cell phones (the phone would not fit in their locker)
Our student population was approximately 220 students – almost 2/3s of our current student body
A daughter of one of our teachers was born on May 4, 2004
(Toronto Star, Apr. 20, 2013 – Toronto Maple Leafs: Return to playoffs would be first-time experience for these kids)

What have you done since May 2004?

Derek Logan
Head of School

Last Wednesday, I went to our boys floor hockey tournament in Oakville with Mr. Marshall. As I expected, the boys were competitive, terrific sportsmen, and represented KCS in the way I’ve come to expect over the past thirteen years.

The boys were playing our arch rival, Mentor College, in the semi-finals. Mentor had squeaked out a 5-4 victory in the round robin portion of the tournament against us, and following the game I heard a number of their players say in front of our boys that they were expecting to play Fern Hill in the finals. Our boys had other plans for the first 21 minutes of the game. We were up 6-2 with six minutes remaining…but we lost 7-6. I was disappointed for the boys, but fifteen minutes later, they had “recovered” from the defeat and they were back to being their usual selves on the bus ride back to KCS.

As we were driving home, and I was thinking that this is what Ron Wilson and Randy Carlyle must have felt like this year, I remembered a particularly memorable defeat that my Dad reminded me of just a couple of years ago when he said to my son, Brandon, “You should ask your Dad about the time his team lost to Ottawa in hockey.” I remember him saying this and thinking to myself, I’ve forgotten about this loss for the past 30 or so years, and yet you’ve kept this in your memory bank for that long. One of the messages of this exchange is that the things we do as kids can often stay with our parents longer than it might stay with the child who actually does them. Anyways, when I was either 14 or 15 we were playing ice hockey against Ottawa. We were winning 4-0 with two minutes to go in the game. When ended up losing 5-4 in the first minute of overtime. My Dad had remembered this event and triggered my memory about it two years ago when he was speaking with my son. The KCS boys on Thursday brought it back. I have a message for the boys: You’ll forget about this in time. Your parents might not.

Derek Logan
Head of School