Calling Toronto Home and Having a Dream: What It's Like to Play in the Maple Leafs Organization

It's Christmas Eve, and Joseph Blandisi is getting ready for all of the food that his grandmother is preparing. No rushing to catch a flight back to Toronto, and his family isn't travelling to him. 

The 29-year-old is at home.

Playing hockey in Toronto, in itself, is significant. But when you're from the city or the Greater Toronto Arena, and you get the opportunity to dawn the Maple Leaf, that can be quite an extraordinary feeling.

Blandisi is one of the fortunate ones now experiencing that feeling firsthand.

He was drafted in the sixth round of the 2012 NHL Draft by the Colorado Avalanche. Blandisi played 101 NHL games and 229 AHL games before landing at home in Toronto on a professional tryout with the Marlies.

Two years later, he remains in the city that lives and breathes hockey. The exact area where Blandisi always dreamt of this one day being a possibility.

"I think, even, when I first got to play for the Devils in the NHL, it felt like a dream come true, obviously to play in the NHL," Blandisi told The Hockey News in a one-on-one interview. 

"But then the dream was always to play for Toronto."

He looks back on all the memories, like playing road hockey as a child with his friends, imagining himself as one of his favourite players on the Maple Leafs, something many kids do.

"Three years old, in my driveway, I was always Mats Sundin or Alex Mogilny, Gary Roberts," Blandisi recollected with a smile.

He might not be playing in the NHL — for the team he grew up idolizing as a child — but to be a professional hockey player at home in Toronto is still a dream.

"I think wanting to play for the Leafs has definitely been a goal of mine, but just to be here, and my family’s travelled so much to see me play in the past ever since I turned pro, so six, seven years for them that they’re everywhere," Blandisi said.

"They had to come see me on Christmas. Even if I was in San Diego, I’d have visitors all the time. So, just for me to be able to be in their backyard and make their travel a lot easier, all they got to do is come battle the downtown traffic now, so it’s a lot better than coming across the country."

Family is paramount for Blandisi. His Italian roots run everlasting throughout his bloodline. And with him being home, he gets the entire Italian Christmas.

"We do the seven fishes on Christmas Eve because we’re not really allowed to eat meat, a religion thing," Blandisi said. "One of my uncles used to cook it all in the garage the morning of. He’s there bright and early and cooking the octopus, everything, squid, things like that."

His Nonna, he says, is up throughout the night before Christmas, making sure everything goes to plan when the family sits down for dinner.

"She wakes up during the night, stirs the sauce and soups," Blandisi said. "There’s a lot of effort that goes into our Christmas', and it’s nice to be home for them.”

Blandisi has even brought some of his Marlies teammates over to taste her cooking.

"Oh yeah, they’ve come to Nonna’s house. They’ve been in the basement. They’ve been full on off days. They’ve been fed," Blandisi said with an immutable smile.

A large number of hockey fans have that dream of stepping foot onto the ice for the Maple Leafs. One player currently living it is Mark Giordano. Acquired by Toronto in March of 2022, the veteran defenseman re-upped with his hometown team for two years at $1.6 million.

However, for the 40-year-old, he had to wait until the back end of his career to make the dream a reality.

"I think playing in Canada, playing in Toronto, like, hockey’s number one. I think you really feel that here," Giordano said. 

"You feel the support, you feel the knowledge of the game from our fans, and I think it’s pretty cool to be able to come to the rink every night and have a fanbase and a city that cares so much about what you’re doing out there."

The Maple Leafs have a shipload of players that fans care about, but one on the top of their lists is William Nylander. Fresh off his new eight-year, $92 million extension with Toronto, the 27-year-old stamped this city as his home.

"It was funny, the other day I was talking to a friend and I said, 'And then we go home to-,' and I was referring to Toronto," he said, dawning the hat of Sugo, one of the top Italian joints in the city. "Without even thinking about it, this is home."

Toronto is filled with immense cultural diversity, and they welcome you in, whether from outside the GTA or throughout the world. Toronto can make you feel at home almost instantaneously with all its different cultural areas throughout the city.

If you know minor hockey in Toronto, you understand how laboriously competitive it is and what it takes to stand out. 

But for Ryan Tverberg, he made that happen. 

Through all the immense work and all the ups and downs, on Oct. 7, 2020, he stared as the team he grew up watching announced his name as their final pick of the NHL Draft.

This chance and opportunity of playing at home was something he never imagined was possible growing up.

"You just grow up and pretty much every game on the TV at home was a Leafs game," he remembered. "But to have it happen, it’s a lot of fun."

One memory engraved in his memory forever is the first time he stepped onto the ice at Scotiabank Arena wearing a Maple Leafs jersey. Although it was a pre-season game in September, Tverberg was living out his dream.

Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe took it a step further, placing the 21-year-old in the starting lineup for the game on Sept. 25 against the Ottawa Senators, which was well received.

"That was a real cool experience, especially starting. [I’m] thankful to Keefe for making that happen," Tverberg said before revealing what it was like. "I’m just there, you’re playing against a lot of those Senators guys, so it was like, ‘Alright, wake up bud.' It was pretty cool."

Moments such as these make a story like this special. Any player, wherever they are in their career, playing at home means the world and likely more to them.

Whether with the Toronto Marlies or Toronto Maple Leafs.

"It's hard to conceptualize," Cameron Gaunce, who's on a professional tryout with the Toronto Marlies, admitted about playing at home.

"For the last 16 years, home for me has been in the off-season. When I'm home, the season's off. Whereas now, all of a sudden, it's the George Costanza worlds colliding a little bit, where I'm at home with my wife, and then I come to the rink and it's my job again."