Toronto Maple Leafs Just as Good as Tampa and Colorado

The Toronto Maple Leafs may have lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning, but it’s important to remember that they were robbed by poor officiating, and were ultimately the better team in the first round of the playoffs.

Not only did the Toronto Maple Leafs deserve to move on after beating Tampa, but they were also – by far – Tampa’s most difficult opponent on the way to the Cup.

After watching these playoffs, it’s clear there is very little difference between Tampa, Toronto and Colorado.  While it’s great to see a Stanley Cup Final that includes two of the best teams, it sucks to know the Leafs are right there and just didn’t get the required breaks.

The Leafs may constantly disappoint their fans, but the fact is, twice in a row now they’ve lost in the first round when they deserved to win, and in both years they likely would have cruised to the Finals.

For some people, this might be worse than just cheering for a bad team, but for me, it gives hope that next year will be different.

The Toronto Maple Leafs Are on the Verge of Winning

The Leafs built a team capable of winning the Cup, and if things had of gone their way, it could have happened.

To many fans the distinction between a team that got unlucky and a team that lost because they deserved to lose doesn’t exist.  That’s fine.  For them, it doesn’t.

But if you are the one building the team, and you want to know what the best course of action is, you have to be honest and figure out if you lost because you weren’t good enough, or if you were a victim of random events.

The Toronto Maple Leafs – despite what their critics might think – clearly believe they could/should have won already, and that all they have to do is re-enter roughly the same team next year and hope for a different result.

Considering they have the deserving Hart Trophy winner on their roster, and the player who would have won the Hart Trophy if voting covered just January to May, they might well be right.

The Leafs appear to have a daunting summer ahead of them, but they really don’t.  They have a couple difficult decisions to make, but ultimately, they’re going to enter next season with more or less the same roster they had, only this time they’ll have three potential star players (at least) in key roles.

Aside from a goalie, the biggest improvement you’ll see from the Leafs going forward is Nick Robertson, Timothy Liljegren and Rasmus Sandin moving from bit players to core players.  The Toronto Maple Leafs will enter next season as Stanley Cup Favorites (along with TB and Colorado) and if those players contribute as expected, they might finally take that next step.

They’re good enough to do it, they have been for years, it’s just a matter of getting a little lucky at the right time.  Don’t forget, if the Toronto Maple Leafs are to follow Tampa’s timeline, they have another five years between drafting their franchise players and winning the Cup.

As for now, it definitely sucks watching Tampa play for their third Cup knowing that the NHL forced the Leafs to win five games to advance, but it’s lessoned somewhat knowing that the Leafs are still getting better and that winning it all is just a matter of time.