The regular season is over and the Toronto Maple Leafs will be playing the Columbus Blue Jackets in a Best-of-Five play-in series.
As we recap the regular season for the Toronto Maple Leafs, you could call it a success as they finished third in the Atlantic Division, or you could call it a failure because they weren’t a team that got a bye into the Round of 16.
Whatever you think about the regular season doesn’t really matter now because it’s officially over. Although the Leafs technically had 12 games left in their schedule, those games no longer exist.
There’s so much that could have happened in that 12-game stretch that we’ll never know.
We’ll never know if Auston Matthews would have scored 50-plus goals, won the Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy and broke the single-season record for goals by a Toronto Maple Leafs player.
The Toronto Maple Leafs could have gone on a 12-game winning streak into the playoffs and finished with home-ice advantage, or the opposite could have happened and they could have actually missed the playoffs.
There’s a number of what-ifs but the biggest thing we’ll miss is home and away games. As a Toronto Maple Leafs fan, every visiting arena has their own aroma or fact about them. Whether it’s a good memory, bad memory or a fun discussion that comes with every game, there’s always a narrative no matter where the Leafs play.
Instead of starting the playoffs at home, every team will be playing away games for the remainder of the NHL season at a neutral Hub City not yet determined.
As we reminisce about the season and what it was like to watch the Leafs play in a different city every other night, here is one fact about every NHL team that we’re going to miss from a Toronto Maple Leafs fan perspective, starting with the Pacific Division.