The Toronto Maple Leafs are about to enter year seven of the Auston Matthews Era.
In case this is your first day being a hockey fan, you should know that although Auston Matthews has become the best player in the history of the Toronto Maple Leafs, he has yet to lead them to a playoff series victory.
Not a single one.
Six years, six first-round losses. *technically five, but who’s counting? *
Classic Hockey Wisdom Loves the Toronto Maple Leafs
Classic hockey wisdom tells us a lot of things:
Keep your stick on the ice.
Go to the net.
There is a lot of stuff in there that is outdated. Us young kids, we are always listening to our Kurt Vile CDs and talking about expected goals on our Blackberries. We just don’t get it.
But Old School fans know the importance of hitting, fighting, and wearing a suit and tie to the game. They know that Nylander is softer than the party-portion of Wendel’s mullet. (Even if they have to ignore that one year he led the NHL In net-front goals in order to believe it).
These Old School fans, the ones who love Mike Babcock and wish that they themselves could verbally abuse a player or two, love to hate on the current version of the Leafs which they see as too “millennial” and representative of “everything that is wrong with society.”
The hypocritical thing, however, is that the Leafs represent the most Old School of Old School ideas. They actually embody what might be the most important idea of Classic Hockey Wisdom:
“You have to learn to lose in order to win” is perhaps the oldest chestnut in the Old School phrase book. Experience is King with these guys. And now the Leafs have it.
As far as I can tell, the core tenet of the Don Cherry Philosophy on Respect and Old School Hockey Tactics is that you must have experience before you can be successful.
These guys talk so much about leadership and experience that they don’t even see it when it occurs.
The Leafs have at least four multi-goal come-from-behind-to-force-overtime-in-the-playoffs scenarios in their last 19 playoff games over three years.
That exemplifies a team with leadership who is earning experience.
The fact that they have lost six years in a row, sometimes excruciatingly so, should teach them what it means to win. It should give them a lot of hard earned experience. And by coming back for more and never giving up, they are showing the kind of determination and never-say-die attitude that the OLD SCHOOL is supposed cherish and keep sacred….that is, unless they’re just a bunch of lazy hypocrites who don’t practice what they preach?
So much of the criticism of the current Toronto Maple Leafs is centred around them being soft, focusing on skill, and Dubas being young and innovative. When people use the term “Dubasite” to refer to anyone who is a fan of the current Leafs Regime, they are setting up a dichotomy of old vs new, young vs old, then vs now.
The irony of the entire situation is that the Toronto Maple Leafs are doing the single most old-school thing imaginable: they are taking a group of young players and slowly getting them experience as they learn to win.
They refuse to quit. They refuse to let anyone else dictate the terms. Those are things Don Cherry taught me are crucial elements to being respectable.
It seems to me that the Kyle Dubas led Toronto Maple Leafs are a bunch of bad asses who never quit and don’t care what anyone says. Isn’t that what people with life-size cut-outs of Brian Burke in their basement are supposed to care about?
Based on the core tenet of Old School hockey, the Toronto Maple Leafs now have the experience to go with their talent. They learned to lose in order to win, and therefore, this is their year.