3 Ways to Turn the Toronto Maple Leafs into Real Cup Contenders

The Toronto Maple Leafs have used up all of their fan’s goodwill by failing to grow from tenacious up-and-comer into the indisputable contender they were promised when the team signed John Tavares to supplement Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner.

The 1-2 punch down the middle was supposed to make the Toronto Maple Leafs into the NHL’s best team, and while they’ve shown glimpses of this possibility for what now seems like years, they’ve so fair failed to deliver when it counts.

Now personally, I happen to think that we make way too much of a tiny sample size.  The Leafs, under Sheldon Keefe, have, more or less, always been one of the top teams in the NHL.

The Columbus Series was a five gamer played six months after the league shut down, and in it, the Blue Jackets set an NHL modern day save percentage record.

The Montreal series featured the absence of John Tavares and Auston Matthews ability to shoot the puck.  Any reasonable person should be able to refrain from judging the team too harshly for these results, but most reasonable would cheer for another team, so there’s a bit of a catch 22 going on here.

Fair or not, this current team has taken a combined whipping from disgruntled Leafs fans upset about 54 years of failure and a pandemic that has taxed everyone’s patience.

So where do we go from here? What follows are three things that I think could put the Leafs over the top.  Three things I think will have to happen to make them into a team that other teams don’t want to play, and a team that is respected as a legitimate Stanley Cup threat.

The team as currently made up could get it done. They probably won’t.  All contending teams make moves to augment themselves for the playoffs, and so, here are three things the Leafs should focus on for the rest of this season in order to enter the playoffs as a top contender.