FAN TAKES A COMICAL VIEW

Toronto animator has documented the past two Leafs seasons, one game at a time

TORONTO Brian Evinou sat in his seat at Scotiabank Arena and watched his characters come to life.

Known among the online Toronto Maple Leafs community for his postgame comics, the Scarborough cartoonist was wearing his John Tavares jersey and drinking a beer while taking in Game 5 of the team’s first-round playoff series against the Tampa Bay Lightning. He was also trying to identify the theme for his forthcoming midnight art project.

“I’m always thinking of what the comic will focus on. Right now, we’re thinking slow start for sure, the Leafs aren’t starting on time,” he said as the Leafs were outshot 14-5 and outscored 2-0 in the first period. Then he pointed to the “C” on his jersey. “I want to see the captain come through tonight.”

A sombre Evinou returned to his seat along with the rest of the anxious crowd, looking for silver linings. Less than four minutes into the period, one of Evinou’s favourite characters followed the artist’s prompts and inserted himself into the Game 5 story. Tavares scored his first of the playoffs, a goal that sparked a dramatic come-from-behind win to give the Leafs a 3-2 series lead and his comic — at least on this night — a happy ending.

“It is probably going to be an incredibly late night,” Evinou said. “But we’ll make it work. We always make it work.”

Evinou, who works at a small animation studio in Toronto and also teaches animation at Durham College, has been drawing comics after every Leafs game for the past two seasons.

There are a lot of late nights for the 41-year-old, who has a son to get ready for school and his day job in the mornings. The best-case scenario is a game ends at about 9:30 p.m. It takes about three hours to draw each comic and, if he can come up with the idea in a reasonable time, he aims to be in bed by 1 a.m. at the latest.

“The story of the game or narrative of the game usually becomes very clear from watching it, and then you’re kind of looking for a twist or something that strikes you as important or funny,” he said. “It can be anything.”

Evinou’s comics began as notebook doodles in high school and evolved into long-form books that he would sell at the Fan Expo.

He started Leafs comics when Auston Matthews was drafted in 2016 and picked it up during Mitch Marner’s contract negotiations in 2019.

Evinou was fully immersed in sports talk, whether it was on the radio, podcasts or social media, and always felt the desire to be a part of it. He had found his way of getting involved with the hockey discussion, and Leafs fans started following along with him.

He ramped things up during the Leafs’ playoff bubble series against Columbus in 2020 and did the same for the National Basketball Association bubble Toronto Raptors-Boston Celtics series. That was when the postgame comics really started to resonate with fans online.

“I had some really tough family things happen at the beginning of last season, and I was kind of looking for a distraction,” Evinou said. “And the comic was just, I did the first game of the season and people were like, ‘Oh my god, I hope you do this every game.’ I was like, ‘Ah, I don’t know if I can do this every game.’ ”

Next thing he knew, he was 25 games into the season. The all-Canadian North Division schedule made for some “bonkers” nights on long Western Canada road swings that led to comics being finished up by 3 a.m. But he carried on. “Those are bad mornings,” Evinou laughed. “But if you don’t do it then, when are you gonna do it? You can’t lose momentum.”

Drawing the Leafs players so regularly has given Evinou a sense of connection to his favourite hockey team.

He loves to showcase the personality of Jack Campbell, or William Nylander’s style, or the poise of the Leafs captain who used to play for his hometown Oshawa Generals.

His animation background really comes out when he can emphasize physical traits like Matthews’ moustache or Pierre Engvall’s neck.

“I find the reason you get good at drawing is because you enjoy spending the time at the table,” Evinou said. “I love being involved in the conversation of the Leafs, and there is so much anxiety being a Leaf fan, so it’s just being able to direct it somewhere.”

He directed it toward 89 postgame comics over the past eight months and hopes to do the same next season. “Sometimes there’s hard losses. Sometimes there’s great material,” Evinou said. “Then sometimes you’re just like, I just wanna go to bed man.”

The Game 7 loss to Tampa Bay was all of the above.