A .673 winning percentage will normally have the fans raring to go. Coming on the heels of a 115 point record season last year, the team is currently in fourth position overall in a thirty-two team league. So, what’s not to like?
Apparently quite a bit.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are a story among stories, and it must be brutal to be a fan of the iconic NHL franchise, one of the league’s original six. Also brutal to be the team’s coach or general manager.
Despite having regular season records that would be the envy of most front offices of most sports franchises, the Leafs tandem of coach Sheldon Keefe and GM Kyle Dubas find themselves on the firing line despite winning 70% of the games their team plays. That’s because, for all their regular season prowess, the Leafs cannot, as if their very own lives depended upon it, get past the opening round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Leaf fans feel a curse upon them. Keefe and Dubas are responsible for making the curse go away. And so far, after three kicks at the can themselves, they’ve not been able to manage what appears to be a super-human achievement. These two, who have been joined at the hip for years, bear the brunt of fallout from what has been seventeen years without a playoff series win.
That’s seventeen years, mind you.
The last time the Leafs made it to the second round was after a seven game opening round series win against the Ottawa Senators in 2004. Since then? Crickets.
What’s particularly agonizing in Leaf Nation is the fact that, in the past two seasons, the Leafs were in first-round elimination games, meaning they had the competition on the ropes, but let them pull off hockey’s version of the rope-a-dope. Ahead 3-1 against Montreal two seasons ago, and 3-2 against Tampa last year, the Leafs allowed both clubs to come back and beat them in seven games. In both cases, the team beating them in the first round went to the Stanley Cup final, but that’s not much of a salve when you’ve got such a lengthy first-round futility streak.
Two words are dirty words in the City of Toronto these days, and Leaf fans spit them out with an animosity that’s palpable: Tampa is one. And worse still, Boston is the other. A 4-1 third period lead in game 7 against Boston several years ago led to a collapse for the ages, with the Bruins coming back to tie the game and win it in overtime. That right there is the reason Toronto-area psychologists have waiting lists. And who’s first on the waiting lists? Toronto players. Toronto still can’t seem to handle Boston, regular season or playoffs, to the point where they get themselves all freaked-out even before puck drop. It would be funny if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s not.
Toronto plays in the killer Atlantic Division, home to some of the best teams in the league. That’s why you end up with first round opponents like two-time defending champion Tampa in a series that would legitimately be a Stanley Cup final in its own right between two excellent teams. But Tampa knows how to win, and Toronto seems to know how to lose, which seems unfair to say, but holy cow.
The Atlantic is not a friendly place.
Boston is playing out of its mind right now and tops the division with an eleven point spread over their closest rival, Toronto. Tampa, of course, is a point behind Toronto with a game in hand. There’s no way anyone’s going to catch Boston, so that leaves a possible first-round match-up against, you know it, Tampa. This has Toronto dentists selling mouth guards to patients prone to grinding their teeth in their sleep, as Toronto fans do. Toronto executives too.
Aside from Boston and Tampa, the Atlantic is a lovely place to live. Florida is a strong team, finishing first overall last year and, despite having a down year in 2022-23, is still not going anywhere. Detroit is much improved, and with the resurgence of Buffalo and Ottawa, there’s three more potentially dangerous teams to have to fight through to get to the Conference Final, much less the Stanley Cup Final. And then there’s sad-sack Montreal, the team that took them out two seasons ago.
Toronto relies on its version of the Fab Four: Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, John Tavares, and William Nylander. All four make millions of dollars, particularly the first three who are all north of the $10 million mark. A somewhat enigmatic Morgan Reilly anchors the defence, and the rest of the roster is hockey poly-filla. The bet by GM Dubas is that these five guys, with a lift from the other fifteen or so, will eventually deliver this franchise to the promised land.
So far no good.
To make matters worse, the window of opportunity appears to be fading, with people already talking about Matthew’s next contract, and will he stay or will he go? Those other guys have finite contracts as well, so the thinking goes that Toronto has to win NOW if they’re to win at all.
Great. They have to beat Tampa in the first-round, sure. But then they’re likely to get the Bruins in the second round. Honestly, if the Leafs were to defeat both Tampa and Boston in the playoffs this year, there would be a parade to Nathan Phillips Square right then and there, never mind the Stanley Cup. Just getting those two monkeys off their backs would be a huge win.
As a boy, I used to cheer for the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Blackhawks. It was decades of futility and curses of my own. A lot of really good swear words were used up in those years, but both franchises eventually came through with multiple championships. It took 31 years for the Red Sox and 40 years for the Blackhawks.
So, to Leaf fans, I wish to offer the hope that it can be done, with perhaps some patience. It may take a lifetime, but you’ll get there in the end.
It’s something that’s wanted: Dead or alive.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 