For Toronto Maple Leafs superfan Mike Wilson, it’s all about sharing the story.In San Jose, Calif., there was the father and son from New Brunswick who were on a multi-year quest to visit every arena in which the Leafs play while they’re on the road.Then there was the young Vancouver woman in Winnipeg who decided to go to every rink the Leafs play on but could only afford to go to one every year. Her tally so far: three. Just two of the hundreds of stories from Leafs fans that Wilson has collected during his quest to watch, in person, all 82 regular season games the team plays this year across the continent.“What I want to find out is, what is it about this team that hasn’t won the Stanley Cup for over 50 years that makes fans so passionate,” said Wilson, 64, seated in his breathtaking 1,000-square-foot museum of Maple Leafs memorabilia in the basement of his Toronto home. Surrounded by cabinets displaying dozens of game-worn jerseys, sticks, autographs, programs and other Leafs ephemera — now a much smaller collection following a recent sale of more than 2,000 items to the Museum of Canadian History in Ottawa — that he collected over 55 years from across the continent, Wilson says his love of hockey started when he was a boy in the ’50s and ’60s on his local ice rinks.Read more:John Tavares’s signature told the Leafs they were ‘serious contenders’Maple Leafs’ Auston Matthews voted as Atlantic Division all-star captainOpinion | Dave Feschuk: Maple Leafs must find right balance of work and rest for Freddie AndersenGrowing up in Scarborough near Pharmacy and Lawrence Aves. meant no shortage of both hockey and pleasure-skating rinks. “I became obsessed with the game of hockey. It was everything,” recalled Wilson, who has been dubbed the “ultimate Leafs fan” by ESPN. Like many kids at the time, that obsession grew to include all things Maple Leafs — cards, pic ...
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