Toronto Maple Leafs a Lot Like Tampa before the 2 Cups

The Toronto Maple Leafs can breathe easy.

The Montreal Canadiens lost game three of the Stanley Cup Finals last night, and now, barring the biggest comeback in the history of sports, the Tampa Bay Lightning are going to win their second straight championship.

This is great news for the Toronto Maple Leafs, a team who is very much built along the lines of the Tampa Bay Lightning.  It’s also great news for other very obvious reasons that I don’t really need to elaborate on or get into.

The NHL may allow one dud team per year into the Finals (Nashville, St. Louis, Dallas and now Montreal have all made it in the last four of the last five years) but only one of those teams actually won the Cup, which means that despite a weird, luck-based playoff format, the Cup does tend to get won by deserving teams (as opposed to whichever average team had a hot goalie at the right time). 

Toronto Maple Leafs and Tampa Bay Lightning

Leafs fans are demanding a winner, despite the fact that it’s only been five years since Auston Matthews was drafted. This seems much worse than it is because the Leafs routinely find the most painful and hilarious ways to lose, but really for context, check this:

Mario Lemieux:  Missed playoffs five out of first six seasons.

Nathan MacKinnon: Won first playoff series in year six.

Connor McDavid: Won a first round series and nothing else in first six years.

But the best team to look at right now is in fact Tampa, on the verge of winning their second straight Stanley Cup.  They also happen to be the team built the most similarly to the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Now, obviously Tampa has been able to use state-tax, home-town-discounts (and potentially outright cheating) to work around the salary cap a little bit, but the Leafs can make up for this easily by eschewing the Tyler Johnson / Ondrej Palat type deals that, without convenient injuries, might otherwise haunt the Lightning.

The point is that the Lightning are a skilled team stocked with (mostly) puck moving defenseman, and so are the Leafs.  Starting with  a record setting season where they lost in the flukiest first-round series of all-time, the Lightning have been the NHL’s best team for three years and (I assume) have now won two Cups.

The thing for the Leafs to note is how the Lightning ignored critics after their embarrassing but understandable loss to the Blue Jackets in 2018-19 (ironically that was probably the best team they assembled).

“Oh my, this team isn’t built for the playoffs,” said many NHL fans and analysts who have since had to eat their words.

Let’s check in on what Leafs fans and analysts are currently saying:

“Oh my, this team isn’t build for the playoffs. By the way, can we re-hire Dave Nonis?”

Pretty much the same thing.

It’s hilarious how Montreal is like totally the way to build a team for the playoffs, and yet, Tampa is the team that is about to hoist the Cup.  One lucky team makes it every year,  and that team is usually defeated by a highly skilled team built the wrong way.  No one notices.

The Lightning didn’t even make the playoffs in four of Steve Stamkos first five years.  Auston Matthews team is five for five.  Stamkos played for the Cup in year seven, won it in year 11.  

Auston Matthews’ team has lots of time.

Worth noting: It wasn’t until the Lightning augmented all their high picks by having a low pick turn into a super-star (Kucherov) that they really took off.

Calling NIck Robertson.  Everyone else, relax. This time has a glorious future ahead of it.