The Toronto Maple Leafs Lose Again in the 1st Round

The Toronto Maple Leafs lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning in game seven of their opening round playoff series.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have now lost six straight opening round series.

Washington, Boston, Boston, Columbus, Montreal, Tampa.

The losing does suck, but frankly, this loss is different from the rest.

Tampa may have moved on, but the Leafs proved they could hang with the best the NHL likely will ever have to offer.  It would have been nice to win, but if you are ever going to lose, this is the team to bow down to.

Make no mistake: the Leafs got screwed.

They won game six, but just not officially.  Winning five games to move on turned out to be just too much to ask. But even still, it had to take one of the worst calls in NHL history to make it happen. (I am referring to the ridiculously overturned Tavares goal).

Toronto Maple Leafs Lose Game Seven

The Toronto Maple Leafs went out in the first round, but only after some of the worst officiating the game of hockey has ever seen.  They overcame a horribly officiated series, one where calls went against them at every turn, to lose by just  a single goal, in the deciding seventh game, to the back-to-back champions.

The Leafs will no doubt lament the loss, but this should not be an indictment on the team that management has assembled. Though six straight losses sounds incredibly bad, on individual merit, each loss is actually quite reasonably explained. Though the Leafs should have moved on to subsequent playoff rounds by now, it is, however doubtful it may seem, the truth that this team is just powerfully unlucky.

I wish that I could sit here and rage about the Leafs horrible play, coaching decisions and effort.

But the thing of it is that the team played great.  While I would have played Timothy Liljegren, his absence can hardly be credited with the loss.  The GM was good, the coach was good, the players were good and there is nothing to complain about.

Except the result.

It would be less annoying for me if I could just spend these 400 words complaining about how bad the Leafs are and how annoyed I am that they can never win when the games are important.

But I can’t do that, because it isn’t true. The Toronto Maple Leafs played great. Their first round series against the reigning Cup Champs was a rousing success – they were the better team, afterall.

But, they didn’t actually win.  Where do we go from here?

Stay the course.