Will the marginally-not-as-bad playoff performance affect Leafs fans hopes for a Cup?
Being a fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs outside of Toronto is a weird environment. A city like Ottawa can be unwelcoming to fans of the other Ontario team.
That doesn’t stop Leafs fans from infiltrating the Canadian Tire Centre to make games in Ottawa look more like a Toronto home game. The problem dates back to at least 2013, when the organization asked Ottawa Senators season ticket holders to please not sell their tickets to Leafs fans.
Come the spring, the almost-contending Sens were eliminated from the playoffs ten days before round one started. That left two types of fans watching hockey here this spring: fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs and fans of whoever they were playing.
Whether their own team didn’t make the Stanley Cup playoffs or they only watch hockey to hate on the Leafs, these fans can be found in your local bar cheering when the Leafs’ latest opponent scores. They can even be found inside Scotiabank Arena, like two viral fans who wear the jerseys of all 31 possible opponents to Toronto home games.
The history
For young fans who had never witnessed a Leafs series win, 2023 was “a once in a lifetime opportunity”. But for those who love to hate the Leafs, this year was disappointing. Hockey fans lost their favourite and longest-running joke.
In the regular season, Toronto was the better team, but history was against them. While their first-round opponent, the Tampa Bay Lightning were coming off of three straight Stanley Cup final appearances, the Leafs were trying to overcome six consecutive first-round exits.
Later in the series, when the 3-1 record favoured the Leafs, fans were reminded the team was 0-11 in series-clinching games since 2013.
Going into the 2023 playoffs, Toronto held both the longest active playoff round win drought (19 years) and the longest active Stanley Cup drought (56 years). Now the Leafs only claim the longest drought since their last Cup in 1967. That time frame is longer than any Cup-less franchise has been active, since all of them entered the league during or after the 1967 expansion.
This year was different. Which begs the question…
Is a second-round exit any better than a first-round exit?
No. Especially when you only have five playoff wins between the two rounds to show for it.
Toronto got past Tampa Bay and their 2021 Conn Smythe playoff MVP goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy in the first round, but ran into another impressive goalie in Florida’s Sergei Bobrovsky. A surprise MVP candidate, Bobrovsky — much like the Florida team itself — was league-average before turning it on in the playoffs. Going into the finals with a 0.935 save percentage puts him near the top — right behind Vasilevskiy’s 0.937 stat line in 2021.
Toronto’s “Core Four” forwards (Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, and John Tavares) are paid to score. They didn’t do that against the Panthers. Between the four, they scored just three of Toronto’s goals in round two.
Though the Leafs have always been a goal-scoring team, they’ve fallen to good goalies in the past; Vasilevskiy in 2022 and the Habs’ Carey Price resembling something closer to his 2015 Hart trophy MVP form when he faced the Leafs in 2021.
Having their own goalie, Ilya Samsonov, perform better than expected in the playoffs was a factor in this Leafs team advancing where they hadn’t before.
As Matthews put it right after their fourth win against Tampa Bay, “it’s a bit of a monkey off our backs”, to make it past the first round for the first time in his career. But he also said, “this is step one of three” in making it to the final.
The Florida Panthers are in that final now. For the third year in a row, the team that beat the Leafs has made it to the final round. The Montreal Canadiens and the Tampa Bay Lightning lost the final after beating Toronto in 2021 and 2022, respectively.
For Leafs fans turned anti-Florida fans, this trend presents some hope. After beating Toronto, Florida swept the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference final. Leafs fans who have found themselves cheering for the Vegas Golden Knights are hoping the Panthers will become another team to beat the Leafs and go on to lose the final.
What now?
The 2023–24 season is up in the air for the Toronto Maple Leafs and their ever-loyal fanbase. Front-office politics need to be navigated before the franchise can re-sign any of its 14 free agents or negotiate extensions with any expiring contracts.
The contracts keeping players in Toronto are in the hands of Brad Treliving now, rather than former General Manager Kyle Dubas. Treliving was announced as Toronto’s new GM this week after serving as General Manager for the Calgary Flames since 2014.
Dubas’s contract, to the surprise of some Toronto fans, wasn’t extended after the 2023 postseason. Many thought with the trade deadline having passed — and Dubas having made many moves that benefitted the Leafs in the playoffs — the GM had done his job and deserved to be resigned.
The Pittsburgh Penguins hired Dubas as their President of Hockey Operations less than two weeks after Toronto announced they wouldn’t be extending his contract.
Treliving said he was “coming in with no preconceived notions” about the moves he’ll make during his first press conference as GM. His priorities are to build relationships with players, especially those like Matthews who will need contract extensions over the summer, and work with coach Sheldon Keefe before deciding anything.
Coming to Toronto, Treliving knows how much the hockey team means to its fans. They supported a team through 19 years of no playoff success. Winning a series will do nothing but bolster the fanbase going into next season.
A season which will definitely, without a doubt be the year.
