Toronto Maple Leafs Must Win Series Against the Blue Jackets

The Toronto Maple Leafs desperately need to win this playoff series against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

It’s been 16 years (!) since the Toronto Maple Leafs last won a playoff series.

If you don’t remember what was happening in 2004, here’s a reminder.

Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake had the most famous Super Bowl half-time show in NFL history, Shrek 2  was one of the highest selling movies, Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in jail and George W. Bush was about to start his second term as President of the United States.

In terms of a sports connection, the Boston Red Sox finally broke the “Curse of the Bambino” capturing their first World Series in 86 years and Lance Armstrong won his sixth consecutive Tour de France title.

Since then, we’ve now found out that Armstrong was a cheater and the Red Sox winning the World Series is a common occurrence, so a lot has changed since 2004.

It’s one thing to go 16 years without winning a championship, but a single playoff series is a joke.

I mean, the Leafs playoff series drought is almost legal to drink at this point.

Toronto Maple Leafs vs Blue Jackets

After the NHL locked out their season in 2004-05, the league changed their rules so that a hard salary cap was now in tact, and that hurt the Leafs at the time. They were always one of the highest spending teams so the inability to sign free agents or acquire higher contracts was no longer an advantage for Toronto.

However, that shouldn’t have been an excuse for much longer than two-to-three years once the team figured out the rules and the salary cap. But that wasn’t the case for the Leafs.

It took them nine years until the shortened 2012-13 season to even make the playoffs for the first time in the salary cap era and that team was an allusion.

Now that the Leafs are past a rebuild, they’ve established themselves as one of the better teams in the NHL, but in three seasons of making the playoffs, the team still hasn’t got the job done.

It’s so crucial for the Leafs to win a playoff round this year. Not only do they have a limited window of success, but they need to build confidence in the dressing room.

In 2016-17, the team was lucky to be there and was battle-tested against Washington pushing five of six games to overtime. In 2017-18, the Bruins were a better team, and in 2018-19, the Leafs should have beaten the Bruins but they could at least blame Mike Babcock’s stubbornness and Nazem Kadri for them blowing that series.

They don’t have any excuses this year.

If you say that Covid-19 and the bubble are excuses, you’re lying to yourself because every single team has that problem. If every team has the same issues, it’s not an excuse.

Sheldon Keefe is experimenting with different All-Star level line-combinations and Nick Robertson may actually make this team for extra skill up-front. The defense will always be a question mark, but they’re fully healthy and Frederick Andersen is rested for a long-playoff run.

There are absolutely no excuses to beat the Columbus Blue Jackets at the minimum and to keep that winning streak all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals.

The Leafs need to win this playoff series, so let’s see what happens when the action begins next week.