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The Toronto Maple Leafs Will Win a Stanley Cup Sooner Than Later

By Stephen Nixon

TORONTO, ON - MAY 27: Auston Matthews #34 and Mitchell Marner #16 of the Toronto Maple Leafs take to the ice for the 3rd period against the Montreal Canadiens in Game Five of the First Round of the 2021 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Scotiabank Arena on May 27, 2021 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Canadiens defeated the Maple Leafs 4-3 in overtime. (Photo by Claus Andersen/Getty Images)
TORONTO, ON - MAY 27: Auston Matthews #34 and Mitchell Marner #16 of the Toronto Maple Leafs take to the ice for the 3rd period against the Montreal Canadiens in Game Five of the First Round of the 2021 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Scotiabank Arena on May 27, 2021 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Canadiens defeated the Maple Leafs 4-3 in overtime. (Photo by Claus Andersen/Getty Images) /
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The Toronto Maple Leafs are going to win a Stanley Cup with Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, one of these years.

The idea of trading Mitch Marner is absurd, but I understand it. After multiple years of First Round failures, it’s easy to target a winger who has scored zero goals in his last 18 playoff games and makes $10.9M per season.

As much as I want to think illogically and trade Marner, the issue with the deal would be the return. It seems almost impossible that the team would fetch anyone even close to his skill-level if they did ship him away.

Since you’re not going to get anyone better, you may as well keep him. Marner is one of the most gifted offensive players in the NHL, and although he hasn’t showed it in the playoffs yet, he’s bound to one of these days. The same thing applies to Auston Matthews, who was unable to score much during the series against Montreal.

He had dozens of chances to score, but Carey Price stopped every shot, but one, that Matthews sent his way.

Since the Toronto Maple Leafs were a Stanley Cup favorite, it’s easy to criticize and yell ” Trade everyone!” However, as they’ve shown during the regular season, Matthews and Marner are two of the best players in the league. Trading them seems like a terrible decision, despite the same results happening year-after-year in the playoffs.

We Need to Stay Paitent with the Core-Four

This isn’t going to be easy, but I promise you, it’ll be worth it. The Toronto Maple Leafs are going to win a Stanley Cup with their core players, sooner than later.

Within the long history of the NHL, the greatest players to ever play typically took a few years to win a Stanley Cup. I understand that the Leafs haven’t even won a playoff round yet, but there’s no magical escalator when it comes to playoff success.

Every team doesn’t win one round, win two rounds, win three rounds, reach a Stanley Cup Final and then ultimately win it. Sometimes a team misses the playoffs three years in a row and then wins the Stanley Cup, or sometimes they make the Conference Finals every year and then ultimately win the Stanley Cup.

Nobody says that you need to win a playoff round first, before going on that long Stanley Cup run.

When you look throughout NHL history, the best players took their time. We need to remember that Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner are entering their sixth NHL season, with two of those seasons being the most rare in NHL history.

The team went through a pandemic and had a five-month layoff during one season and then played in front of zero fans for the next. You could really throw out the last 15 months of Toronto Maple Leafs hockey when comparing it to the history of the league, because it’s something that we hope no team ever has to face again.

Matthews and Marner are not in their 20th NHL season. They have a minimum of seven amazing years left in them as superstar talents. In terms of superstars of the past, here’s how long it took them to win a Stanley Cup.

  • Sidney Crosby – 4 Years
  • Bobby Orr – 4 Years (12 teams in NHL)
  • Wayne Gretzky – 5 Years (21 teams in NHL)
  • Mario Lemieux – 7 Years (21 teams in NHL)
  • Alex Ovechkin – 13 Years

Sure, Crosby and his Pittsburgh Penguins got the job done earlier than this current Leafs roster, but did you expect anything different? Crosby is the greatest player of the past 20 years.

To compare him to some of the other greats like Gretzky and Orr, they took four and five years respectively, in a league that barely had any teams.

It’s not a fun scenario to think of, but us Leafs fans may have to wait as long as Ovechkin did to lift his first Stanley Cup. After 13 years of suffering, the “Great Eight” finally won 16 games in the spring and won the ultimate prize.

However, before I sign off, the biggest comparison to Matthews and Marner right now should be Mario Lemieux.

As we look back at Super Mario’s career, we think about nothing, other than greatness. He was a three-time Hart Trophy winner, six-time Art Ross Trophy winner, two-time Conn Smythe winner and lifted the Stanley Cup two times (stats: hockeydb.com).

However, it took him seven years to do it. In those seven years, Lemieux missed the playoffs five times. His team didn’t get knocked out of the playoffs in the first round five times, they MISSED the playoffs FIVE TIMES!

In a 21-team league, led by a player who scored 70 goals and 168 points in one season, Lemieux’s Penguins couldn’t even grab a playoff spot.

If you thought being a Leafs fan was a struggle, imagine the pain of going through a half-decade of that?

As much as the fanbase was getting angry, did the Penguins trade Lemieux because they weren’t having playoff success? Of course not. They stayed the course for as long as it took to finally win a Stanley Cup because they knew how much talent they had.

Next. Leafs Are NHL's Most Embarassing Franchise. dark

As a result, the Toronto Maple Leafs should move ahead with Matthews and Marner, because they’re two of the most gifted players in the NHL and talent ultimately always wins in this league.

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