VANCOUVER—In every city it’s the same hymnbooks, as it’s always been: a single anthem, then the sound of clashing loyalties. The arenas were half-filled with blue and white in Calgary, in Edmonton, in Vancouver. It’s been this way forever, here and in Ottawa, too. It’s both religion — Canadian religion, mind — and math.

And so, every Leafs game out here is full of atmosphere, and is a joyous clash. In Edmonton, the duelling chants of “Let’s Go Oilers” and “Go Leafs Go” reached a pas-a-deux crescendo; in Calgary, the fight was simultaneous, with “Go Flames Go” and “Go Leafs Go” overlaid on one another.

Here in Vancouver, it was harder to pick out the Leafs jerseys, if only because the Canucks have gone to a blue that isn’t so dissimilar. The Canucks don’t sell out games when they’re not very good, and for all the hope of Brock Boeser, they aren’t selling out games now. But some locals called Saturday night the biggest crowd of the season, and a lot of them were here for the Leafs.

And if you couldn’t pick them out right away from a distance, you could hear them. A Canucks penalty was greeted with a roar, as was Toronto’s lone goal in a 2-1 loss. The rhythms of the game — Vancouver’s strong start, followed by a Leafs comeback that was extended, desperate, furious and doomed — were equally supported. As Vancouver columnist Ed Willes has been saying for years, the Canucks needed a strong start to take the crowd out of the game.

“No matter what rink we’re playing at, it seems like we have a good support base, and fan base, cheering us on,” Leafs forward James van Riemsdyk said. “That’s always fun for us.”

“It’s a great atmosphere here in this building,” Leafs defenceman Morgan Rielly said. “We have great fans in Western Canada, and tonight was just another example of the support that we get.”

He said that in Edmonton, but it could have been any of these stops.

“Honestly, whenever the Leafs go on the road, it’s almost like a road game for the home team,” Oilers star Connor McDavid said in Edmonton. “They travel with a lot of fans.”

It’s not so much that; it’s more that the fans have pre-travelled. Ontario just has more people who were drafted into the faith, and Toronto has exported a lot of those people across the country. The Habs do the same in some places; they, too, are an old church. It makes for an atmosphere that is hard to find anywhere else.

A colleague floated the idea of an all-Canadian division this week, which is an idea that has been kicked around for years. It’s always been tantalizing, travel challenges and all, because as much as this country loves hockey, it doesn’t love the same hockey. Canada has always been a series of nation-states when it comes to the NHL, and the springtime argument that the country should unite behind the last Canadian team has always been hooey. In general, Canadians love our own teams just about as much as we hate each other’s.

Which brings us back to the way the Leafs already barge into the nation’s hockey living rooms. Toronto lost Saturday night in a game that showed their two extremes. In the first period, they looked like a team that had been given most of two days off. And in the second and third, you saw a team that could do anything to the game it liked, except force the puck into the net. The Leafs haven’t been more than a middling possession team this year, a middling pace team. They haven’t found what they had at the end of last season.

But if they fulfill their promise — well, if you grow up outside of Toronto you learn to hate the Leafs. They are prime time on just about every Saturday night; all other things being equal, they are the lead on the national sports broadcasts. They are, like so many other things about Toronto, a dominant cultural force that is rightly opposed by the rest of a country for whom the centre of the universe is, more than anything, a self-important bore.

That’s just math, yes. The Leafs just have more fans, and the media reflects what we see in these buildings when Toronto rolls through.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

But what happens if these Leafs find their top gear? What happens if they find that top gear for years, and become perennial contenders for the first time in decades? It’s on the table, if not assured. The Leafs used to get showcased on Saturday night even when they were mediocre, and even when they stunk. They have been fool’s gold for so long. If the promise of this Leafs era is realized, what happens to the already well-developed superiority complex of Toronto fans? How much rocket fuel does the media attention get? It could feel, for the other tribes, suffocating.

So when you talk about this era’s potential, don’t forget that part. The Leafs, right now, are still a charming thing, playing fun hockey. It’s hard for people to hate this team. But if they hit their heights, everything else will be heightened, too. The Leafs were hated in an era where they weren’t really worth hating. It’s possible that, on the ice and off, we ain’t seen nothing yet.