Toronto Maple Leafs are good enough to win a Stanley Cup now

The Toronto Maple Leafs have added six players over the past two weeks, but are they good enough to win the Stanley Cup? The rest of the Eastern Conference continues to add depth to their rosters, so it’s still hard to believe whether this is the Toronto Maple Leafs’ time or not.

Thankfully the Leafs won’t have to face the Boston Bruins in the First Round this year, because they’re clearly the favorites in the East. Not only do they have elite skill on forward and defense, but Linus Ullmark is having a Vezina Trophy-type season with a 1.88 GAA, .938 SV% and 31-4-1 record (stats: hockeydb.com).

They’ve played 60 games this season and have less than 10 regulation losses, which is crazy. The team is humming at an incredible pace and there’s no reason to believe that they won’t continue that in the playoffs.

However, the playoffs are weird and anything can happen. The Tampa Bay Lightning looked unstoppable a few years ago, then ultimately got swept by a much weaker Columbus Blue Jackets team. It was a shock to the hockey world, but it was just one of those things that happen in the playoffs.

If sports were easy to predict then Vegas and the entire gambling community would seize to exist. Fans across the world would be billionaires by predicting sporting events every night, but that’s why those sportsbooks continue to operate. Just when you think it’s a lock and a team like the Bruins will walk their way to the Stanley Cup Final, they usually do the opposite.

Toronto Maple Leafs can beat anyone in the Stanley Cup Playoffs

There are some teams that the Leafs match up against better than others, but there’s not a single team they cannot beat on any given night.

Over the past five years, the team has continued to lose in the First Round of the playoffs in the most disappointing way, but that hardship is bound to flip one of these years. It seems impossible that Toronto would lose once again in Game 7 of the First Round, so just based on those odds, you’d have to assume that the Leafs can win a playoff round.

Toronto was a great regular season team over those five seasons, and still is this season, but they’ve changed their strategy. Instead of keeping the same group that got them through the regular season, they made a ton of trades to change their identity for the playoffs. They will have a different look in the postseason, which is great news for Leafs fans.

By acquiring players like Luke Schenn, Jake McCabe, Ryan O’Reilly and Noel Acciari, it gives Toronto a much different appearance in the playoffs. You can win regular season hockey games with only having skill, but in the playoffs, you need way more than that. You need big monsters on the blue line and guys who play with an edge and all four of those players I mentioned have an element of that.

Hockey is the only sport where the game drastically changes from the regular season to playoffs, so Kyle Dubas finally learned his lesson and went with an old-school approach for this year’s playoff push. If Ilya Samsonov can be above-average, this team can beat anyone and Leafs Nation should be very excited about what’s happening next.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are going to beat Tampa Bay in the First Round this year and will have a legitimate chance at winning a Stanley Cup.