The Toronto Maple Leafs did not win the Stanley Cup.
The Toronto Maple Leafs lost in the first round, while the St. Louis Blues went on to win the Stanley Cup.
While it’s never fun to lose, the Leafs do get some good news with the Blues taking the NHL’s ultimate prize, and that news is: The Toronto Maple Leafs are 100% capable of wining the Stanley Cup.
The Leafs are going to have to make some moves over the summer to get in under the cap and replace a few outgoing players, but the bottom line is that they have a far superior core than the Blues.
Leafs > Blues
The Leafs are no longer tied with the Blues for the NHL’s longest streak of championship futility. The Blues got the big prize first, and that’s fine because over the next few years, the Leafs are surely going to be the better team.
The Blues core of Ryan O’Reilly, Vladimir Tarasenko, Jaden Schwartz, Alex Pietrangelo, Colton Paryako, Brayden Schenn and Jording Binnington is pretty decent.
But it’s not even in the same stratosphere of Toronto’s Auston Matthews, John Tavares, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, Morgan Rielly, Nazem Kadri, Jake Muzzin and Freddie Andersen.
And don’t forget, the Leafs are younger. And St. Louis doesn’t have an Auston Matthews.
I think we got used to how good the Leafs are and started taking it for granted pretty quickly, but it’s crazy to think that Kadri is the third best centre on an NHL team.
Or that they could potentially have a top 3 defenseman of Rielly, Muzzin and Gardiner.
Or that Mitch Marner is either their third or fifth best player (depending on how you regard Andersen and Rielly).
Or even that John Tavares is not the best player on his team.
Additionally, this Leafs team also has Andreas Johnsson (scored at a 1st line rate this season) and Kasperi Kapanen (potentially the second fastest player in the NHL) plus two blue-chip blue-line prospects in Timothy Liljegren and Rasmus Sandin.
So the point here is if the Blues can win a Cup with their roster, then the Leafs can win with theirs.
Don’t forget, the odds are in the Leafs favor because St Louis just became the first team in 12 years to win a Cup without a sure-fire 100% guaranteed best player in the NHL on their roster, and the Leafs have two (maybe three) of those.
If the 2019 Blues are the 2007 Ducks, then that makes the 2019 Leafs the 2007 Penguins (They had 47 wins that year, the Leafs 46 this year) who went out in the first round, but went on to appear in four subsequent Stanley Cup Finals.
Sure, the Ducks were the 2007 Champs, but the Penguins were better at the time and would go on to be an all-time great team. Knowing what we know now, we can easily see that it would be better to be the 07 Penguins than the 07 Ducks.