You have to admire the commercial instincts behind this doc, directed by Jason Priestley for the CBC, which trades on nostalgia for primo Canadiana as the nation mutates into something unrecognizable. There’s also never a bad time to tell the story of Harold Ballard, an archetypal Lord of Misrule incapable of waging a dull moment. Priestley’s film is a zippy and good-humoured enterprise that capably moves through the man’s chronology, from carefree wealthy playboy to the man whose curse—32 years after his death—still lingers over Maple Leaf Gardens and the misbegotten team that lives there. Having explained how Ballard managed to win controlling interest in the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1971, despite being the worst possible candidate, Offside revisits all the greatest hits, including his jail time in ’72 for a string of white-collar offences and the multiple ways he went on to destroy his team through greed, malice, and sheer obstinance. Sun Tzu wrote that “An evil enemy will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes,” but he left out the bit about trading Lanny McDonald or replacing the Queen’s portrait with more seats because “she doesn’t pay admission”. 

A section about Ballard’s full-spectrum bigotry is tedious and predictable. Would the man be cancelled today, muses one young journo? Yes, definitely, and so what? Sportsnet’s Donnovan Bennett hits the nail on the head when he states: “I think in some ways Ballard was smarter than the media.” (Correct.) Cue a variety of clips demonstrating the man’s very calculated acts of outrage, including a hilarious encounter with Barbra Frum and precious moments from his quixotic campaign to ban female reporters from the dressing room. “We got guys in there with cocks as long as your arm!” he thunders. “Yes, I laughed then,” says a repentant Globe & Mail reporter, “But you wouldn’t use that quote now.” Except we both did. 

You can’t really say that Offside offers any new information or psychological inquiry beyond “Ballard loved to be hated.” Among others, Darryl Sittler, Lanny McDonald, Jim McKenny, Wendel Clark, and Gary Leeman speak politely through thin lips about their enigmatic tormentor. Tiger Williams declares his love. Presumably welcomed back to the Ceeb, Don Cherry offers a more sober assessment of the man he praised in the ’70s as “my kind of guy”, conceding that Ballard was a pathological skinflint who seemed bent on punishing his best assets for stealing the attention or demanding a decent paycheque. Where the film succeeds is in capturing Ballard as the effortlessly amusing nutcase that he was, like a combination of Gatsby, Howard Hughes, and Charles Foster Kane squeezed through a Hoser filter. Equally, an end card informing us that Leafs are now owned by some sort of multinational conglomeration of cyborgs reminds us that Ballard’s era of Carny Capitalism sure beats the hell out of the corporate version we’re saddled with now.

Stir, November 2022