The Toronto Maple Leafs are indisputably among the NHL’s best teams.
They aren’t perfect, but no team can be in a salary cap league. The Toronto Maple Leafs have weaknesses, such as allowing too many shots and really heavily on their goaltender to cover for their weak defensive game. But the Penguins have a fairly weak blue line, an untested back-up and a seemingly injury prone starter. The Capitals are a shadow of the team the Leafs almost beat last year. The Lighting, as I mentioned yesterday, dress two of the worst players in the entire NHL. Columbus, and Boston are threats too, but they are by no means perfect teams.
There just isn’t one. Everyone has weaknesses, and in the Eastern Conference, anyone who qualifies for the Playoffs has a half-decent chance of making it to the Finals.
In Toronto this week, everyone, now that the Playoffs are definitely assured, has been talking about who the best opponent for the Leafs to play is. I think this discussion is taking the entirely opposite tone is should be taking. Who cares who the Leafs have to play? Those teams should be afraid to play the Leafs, not the other way around.
I believe that as a whole, the group of people who make up the diverse factions of Leafs Nation have one main thing in common (besides their favorite team): They expect nothing.
You can not hate the Habs. You can love Martin Marincin. You can hate Wendel Clark, be skeptical of Mike Babcock, or even love Jake Gardiner: there is almost nothing that Leafs Nation won’t tolerate, except for being optimistic about the team.
The defining features of the Toronto Maple Leafs franchise, for about 50 years, has been failure, bad management, terrible trades, bad luck and disappointment.
The Penguins managed to have Mario Lemieux, Jamomir Jagr, Ron Francis, Sidney Crosby and Eugene Malkin on their team over the last thirty years. Nothing against Mats Sundin, but that hardly seems fair.
Plan the Parade!
So you’ll have to excuse the Leafs fans if they happen to be the most neurotic group of fans in the history of sports. Now that the Leafs are overwhelmed with good fortune, in the form of Matthews, Marner, and Nylander, the fans can barely accept it. Some will still tell you, with their team featuring one of the best players in the NHL, their goalie in the conversation for the Vezina, and a sixth place rank in in the overall standings, that the team is ‘still rebuilding.’
This is a group of people who revere Roman Polak and despise Jake Gardiner. To most other hockey fans, that wouldn’t make any sense, but every member of Leafs Nation, even if they don’t agree, or understand why, knows that for whatever reason, we love our grinders and are skeptical of skill. (And it’s not just in hockey; this is the town that loves Ryan Goins but could never really dig Shawn Green).
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But in Leafs Nation, the only verboten thing is to say the team is good. That they’re maybe the best in the league. Like a bunch of hipsters pretending not to like an objectively catchy jam just cause it’s on the radio, Leafs Nation continues, lamely, to play it too-coo-for-school.
My point here is this: Any other team in the league would consider themselves Cup Contenders at this point, at the very least. Their fans wouldn’t go online and mock anyone for suggesting they might have the best team in hockey. But Plan the Parade isn’t just a sarcastic catch-phrase, it’s a sarcastic lifestyle. I’m half convinced that Leafs Nation are the secret sports-goths of the world: pessimistic, contrary and refusing to believe good things might happen.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have Mitch Marner, a player poised for back-to-back 60 point seasons as a 19/20 year old. which puts him on track for a Hall of Fame career. Morgan Rielly is one of the only defenseman in the NHL playing the kind of minutes he does and putting up the kind of numbers he is. Auston Matthews missed twenty games and is on track to lead the league in even-strength goal scoring. William Nylander barely gets talked about and the guy is a Hart Trophy/Art Ross winner waiting to happen. JVR has the most goals with the least ice-time in NHL history. I can go on.
Hype!
Why isn’t here more hype around this team? Why should this team be afraid of anyone? Who wants to play a team where the fourth line has second line scoring abilities and an elite defensive centre? Who can match JVR on the third line? There might be a small handful of other teams where Nikita Zaitsev is the fourth best puck moving defensemen. How many teams deploy a player of Marner’s skill as a ‘secondary’ player?
Next: When Is it OK to Question a Cup Winning Coach?
The Leafs arguably dressed their optimal lineup last night for the first time this season, and they beat up the so-called best team in the NHL.
Someone has to win the Stanley Cup this year, no reason why it can’t be the Toronto Maple Leafs. If you compare lineups, I don’t think any team should be favored ahead of them.