The Toronto Maple Leafs regular season went exactly as planned this year, but now what?
If you surveyed 100 Toronto Maple Leafs fans prior to the season and asked “how did the regular season go?” the majority would have said that the team secured home-ice advantage and made the playoffs.
That’s not a surprising statement to make because for the last few seasons, that’s exactly what has happened. Despite being the favorite to win for the past two years, the team has failed to do, wasting countless years of the Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner Era’s.
Not only was the regular season success not shocking this campaign, but neither were the individual or team stats.
From a team perspective, the Leafs finished the season in the top-10 of both goals scored and goals allowed and have the second best power-play in the NHL.
As for the individual stats, Mitch Marner will end the season as the team leader in points, Auston Matthews will be the team’s highest goal-scorer, while William Nylander and John Tavares will be point-per-game players and 30-plus goal scorers.
Nothing Shocking About the Toronto Maple Leafs Regular Season
As for the rest of the roster, Michael Bunting provided another 20-plus goal season, there wasn’t much scoring depth in the team’s bottom-six and Matt Murray got injured.
If you were to Leafs fans about those scenarios prior to the season, they would have believed every word. Even the fact that Toronto traded for a big-name player like Ryan O’Reilly at the NHL Trade Deadline or that Matthew Knies joined the roster wouldn’t be surprising for any dialed-in fan.
With zero surprises for the regular season, we all hope that isn’t true for the playoffs.
It’s been 19 years since the Leafs have won a playoff series. One of the team’s best players during that last playoff win was Gary Roberts, who’s now 56 years old. Mats Sundin retired 14 years ago and it’s now been almost nine years since the unfortunate passing of head coach Pat Quinn.
An entire generation of fans has grown up without a single Leafs playoff series win and if everything goes how the most recent ones have, it’ll reach 20 years without a playoff win by next April.
This is the time of the year where we want to hear the words “shocking” and “surprising” when it comes to the Leafs. Nobody will be shocked if the Tampa Bay Lightning beat Toronto, so this team needs to change the narrative.
They have the firepower up-front, a solid defensive-core and a goalie who looks ready to be the man in the biggest games of the year.
We sometimes forget just how fun this time of the year is, so enjoy every second of each game, but expect to be shocked, because this year could be a lot different than the previous 19 seasons.