Toronto Maple Leafs: 5 Things We’re Missing Without Hockey Right Now
It feels like the Toronto Maple Leafs haven’t played hockey since 1967.
Every passing day is harder without being able to see the conclusion of the Toronto Maple Leafs season.
There are only so many top-10 lists we can talk about before we go crazy from nostalgia.
Last month, I wrote an article entitled “I Miss Hockey So Much” and that statement is just as true then as it is today.
I think I miss it even more.
Every day feels like groundhog day and you can only simulate the Leafs winning the Stanley Cup in NHL 20 so many times.
As golf season begins in Toronto, in a normal year, so would the Stanley Cup Finals. Late May and early June weekends were perfect when you’d be able to play 18 in the morning and then meet up a bar with your buddies at night to watch the Finals.
In today’s world, the closest thing to doing that is having a beer over Zoom while playing Rory McIlroy PGA TOUR followed by NHL 20.
Sure, we can play golf now in Ontario but with social distancing restraints, it’s not the same.
I think that health officials are doing a great job trying to make the world safe in this pandemic, but as a sports fan, this time of the year is so meaningful so it’s unfortunate we can’t enjoy it.
As the NHL looks to make a decision on the remainder of the season in a few weeks, there are a number of things we’re missing from the current stoppage.
Here are the five biggest things we’re missing without hockey right now.
#5. Playoff Stretch
Every team had played anywhere between 68 and 71 games when the NHL stopped their season in March.
Therefore, there was that last stretch of hockey that is almost as fun as the playoffs still to be played. In the Eastern Conference, there were essentially five teams that were guaranteed a playoff spot: Boston Bruins, Tampa Bay Lightning, Washington Capitals, Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers.
Then, there were six other teams that were jockeying for the last three spots: Toronto Maple Leafs, Carolina Hurricanes, Columbus Blue Jackets, New York Islanders, New York Rangers and Florida Panthers.
Toronto Maple Leafs fans assumed that Toronto would make the playoffs, but with 12 games remaining in their season nothing was guaranteed. We’ve seen the Leafs fall off cliffs before, so you’re never completely optimistic about the result.
The Western Conference race was similar to the East, except it is even tighter. St. Louis Blues and Colorado Avalanche are the only two teams in the Conference that looked locked for a playoff spot, while 10 teams fight for the final six spots.
With so many games and teams all in the playoff race, every night from March 1st to April 4th should have been must-watch TV.
The life-and-death of an NHL team’s playoff hope was not only in their own fate, but reliant upon so many other outcomes. Whether their rival won, lost or made it to overtime, there were three scenarios that could affect making the playoffs.
Scoreboard watching is so much fun during the end of the regular season, so that’s definitely a big piece we’re missing this year.
#4. Was Frederik Andersen Going to Deliver in the Playoffs?
Assuming the Leafs made the playoffs, this was going to be the biggest year of Frederik Andersen’s career.
Over the past three seasons, Andersen has been OK during the Leafs’ playoff runs. He hasn’t been the main factor towards why the Leafs lost each one of those series, but he hasn’t been able to steal a series like fans hoped he could.
From 2018 to 2019, Andersen’s playoff SV% improved drastically from .896 to .922, but his GAA was still a little too high at 2.75.
During most Stanley Cup runs, a goaltender’s GAA is closer to 2.00, so in order for the Leafs to be successful, Andersen will have to improve on that statistic.
In four seasons in Toronto, Andersen has shown that he’s a definitive number-one goaltender and at times is one of the best in the world. He finished fourth in Vezina Trophy voting in 2017-18 and actually received one first-place vote.
However, his current season has been his worst in Toronto. It may not have everything to with him, though.
The Toronto Maple Leafs defense has been shattered with injuries. Morgan Rielly and Jake Muzzin have missed extensive time this year, so Tyson Barrie, Justin Holl, Cody Ceci and Travis Dermott have been asked to play bigger roles than they’re capable of.
Despite injuries being an excuse, once the playoffs were going to hit, the team most likely would have been at full-strength so we would have been able to see what type of Andersen we were going to get this year.
Were we going to see the October Andersen who struggles at the beginning of every season or the Vezina-caliber Andersen who stopped 37 of 38 shots in Game 1 of the 2019 Playoffs?
With one year left on his contract, the hockey stoppage is minimizing the amount of games that Andersen has to prove why he should the goaltender of the future.
#3. Could the St. Louis Blues Win Back-to-Back Stanley Cups?
From worst-to-first, the Blues went from dead last in the NHL to Stanley Cup champions all within six months.
On January 3rd, 2019, the Blues were dead last in the league. Not just last in their division or conference, but the entire National Hockey League. Typically an NHL team knows who they are and how the season will go by American Thanksgiving, but to be in such a terrible position in January and succeed is unheard of.
Led by goaltender Jordan Binnington, the Blues went on a hot-streak and were on their way to glory. For the first time in team history, they won the Stanley Cup.
One season removed from that magical run, the Blues are in a much safer position heading in the playoffs than they were last year. Leading the Central Division with 94 points, the Blues were likely going to end the year in first or second place and would be guaranteed home-ice advantage in the first round.
With the playoffs in sight, the Blues had their eyes on a repeat.
Led by the Ryan O’Reilly, Alex Pietrangelo and Jordan Binnington, the Blues’ core has stayed intact year-over-year, so the players that experienced what it took to a win a Cup last year were are all the same guys who would be doing it again.
Repeating a championship is so difficult, but that experience is incredibly important and the Blues seemed like they had a legitimate shot at doing it.
It would have been an awesome story-line to see if the Blues could get through the tough Western Conference again and repeat as champions, but unfortunately we’ll have to wait a while to figure that out.
#2. Could All Four Western Canadian Teams Make the Playoffs & Win Stanley Cup?
When the NHL season stopped, three of the four Western Conference Canadian teams held a playoff spot.
With only seven Canadian teams in the NHL (four in the West, three in East), it’s always special to see multiple teams make the playoffs.
The Stanley Cup hasn’t crossed the boarder since 1993 but plenty of teams that have came close. The Calgary Flames still think that Tampa Bay stole the cup away from them in 2004, while the Edmonton Oilers may have brought the cup home in 2006 if Dwayne Roloson never got injured.
The Ottawa Senators were no match for the Anaheim Ducks in 2007 when they made Finals, and the Vancouver Canucks have been one win away from the Stanley Cup twice, losing in Game 7 in both 1994 and 2011.
With zero Stanley Cup Finals appearances and only one since 1967, the Winnipeg Jets and Toronto Maple Leafs are the laughing stocks of Canadian hockey, whereas the Montreal Canadiens have bragging rights as the last Canadian team to win a Stanley Cup.
Hockey is to Canada, what baseball is to America. If no American team had won the World Series since 1993, I’m sure the world would be exploding.
Despite there only being a 7/31 chance a Canadian team will win the Stanley Cup in an equal world, those odds would suggest that it’s time for a team to win north of the boarder.
If Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg and Vancouver were all to make the playoffs, that would give a Canadian team a 50 percent chance at making the Cup Finals. I’d take those odds all day that one of those teams would end up making the Stanley Cup Finals, so that would have been amazing to see.
#1. The Rocket Richard Trophy Race
There was a three-man race for the Rocket Richard Trophy when the NHL season stopped and one of those people in the race was Auston Matthews.
Scoring on 16.2 percent of his shots, Matthews sat at 47 goals when everything halted. Only Alex Ovechkin and David Pasternak had more goals than Matthews, having scored 48 thus far.
As much as the talk around Toronto was about Matthews potentially breaking Rick Vaive’s single-season goal record of 54 goals, winning the Rocket Richard is 10-times more important.
When Vaive broke the record for the Toronto Maple Leafs, he finished 38 goals behind Wayne Gretzky for first place. In the entire NHL, Vaive was fifth in goals scored, so even though he had a great season, he was never in the hunt for the league-lead.
Also, yes you read that right. Gretzky had 92 (WTF!) goals and 212 points in the 1981-82 season. He had 65 more points than the second-best Mike Bossy.
Enough about The Great One, though.
In the modern-NHL, Matthews’ 47-goals in 70 games is already more impressive than Vaive’s 54 in 1982 and winning the Rocket Richard would put him in elite company.
With only a handful of games left in the season, Toronto was actually scheduled to face the Boston Bruins and Washington Capitals once more. Those games would have been must-watch and a ton of fun, as we watched Matthews, Ovechkin and Pasternak battle it out for the goal-scoring title.
Next. Should Matthews Be Captain of Maple Leafs?. dark
If the NHL season returns, hopefully they don’t go straight into playoffs because it would great to see Matthews finish what he started. He deserves a 50-goal season because although he’s an amazing talent, a season like that sometimes only happens once a career.