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Toronto Maple Leafs Expecting Greatness in 2019-20

By James Tanner

TORONTO, ON - FEBRUARY 2: Auston Matthews #34 of the Toronto Maple Leafs skates with the puck against the Pittsburgh Penguins during the second period at the Scotiabank Arena on February 2, 2019 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. (Photo by Kevin Sousa/NHLI via Getty Images)
TORONTO, ON - FEBRUARY 2: Auston Matthews #34 of the Toronto Maple Leafs skates with the puck against the Pittsburgh Penguins during the second period at the Scotiabank Arena on February 2, 2019 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. (Photo by Kevin Sousa/NHLI via Getty Images) /
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The Toronto Maple Leafs can only do one thing to meet expectations this season.

In order to meet expectations, the Toronto Maple Leafs must win the Stanley Cup.

They won’t impress anyone by making it to the second round of the playoffs, or appearing in the Finals.

Some individual awards would be cool, but unless they are accompanied by a championship, who cares?

This is the year when the Toronto Maple Leafs have to win the Stanley Cup.

Cup or Bust

It’s incredibly unfair to write the things I wrote in this article so far.

The NHL is a league with a salary cap and a ton of parity. The Tampa Lightning lapped the rest of the league (mostly due to a ridiculously and unsustainable power-play that scored at a near 30% clip) and still lost in the first round.

In a single playoff series where the best team plays the worst team, the worst team will still win more than one in five tries.

So even if you are the best team ever assembled – and in the salary cap era, this might actually be true about the Leafs – you will still need an absolute ton of luck to win.

So perhaps we shouldn’t say Cup or Bust, because it’s not really fair.

But then again, this is just sports, and we’re just fans – why do we need to be fair?

The Toronto Maple Leafs will never have a better chance to win.  They will have Marner, Matthews and Nylander all approaching their peak seasons, while Andersen, Tavares, Muzzin, and Barrie have yet to decline noticeably.

You have to give management credit for the team they have built, but it’s only worth it if they win.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have a team in which they have two of the five best centres in the league.

In addition, they’ve got one of the best goalies, three of the best defenseman (if they add Jake Gardiner back, which seems more likely by the day, they’ll have four of the 25 best defenseman in the NHL on their roster with Travis Dermott probably soon to enter that stratosphere).

As for wingers, no team in the league can touch them.  They’ve got Mitch Marner, William Nylander, Andreas Johnsson, Kasperi Kapanen and Zach Hyman.  No team in the league can even come close to matching that kind of depth on the wings.

At right wing, centre and defense, the Leafs are probably the best in the NHL.

Leafs Top Ten Prospects. dark. Next

They clearly have the best roster, and are the clear-cut favorites to win this year’s  Stanley Cup.

Fair or not, doing so is the only way to meet expectations.

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