Toronto Maple Leafs Can Still Win This Series (And They Will)
By James Tanner
The Toronto Maple Leafs are down 3-0 in their second round series, after an OT loss to the Panthers on Sunday night.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are down, but not out.
While unlikely, a comeback at this point isn’t totally impossible, and certainly the roster the Leafs have is capable of anything.
Last night’s game wasn’t exactly their best performance, but it was a winable game and it’s hard not to be frustrated with the results of the first three games of this series.
The Leafs may be down 3-0, but they could be up 3-0 doing absolutely nothing differently.
The Toronto Maple Leafs Same Old Playoff Luck
There were those who complained that the Leafs didn’t “deserve” to beat Tampa, which was so funny I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
The irony is, that the same people who don’t want to give this roster credit for a victory this year, completely ignored the fact that they didn’t deserve to lose in any of the three previous season’s playoff losses.
The Leafs were by far the better team against Columbus three years ago, they just got goalied.
The Leafs destroyed the Canadiens, lost twice in overtime, and outplayed them in seven out of seven games.
Last year against Tampa the Leafs were denied a fourth win by the referees of game six, and out played the Lightning vastly in game seven, only to be set down by Andrei Vasilievskiy’s best ever game.
In all three seasons, the Leafs “deserved” to go to round two, so if they got a bit lucky this year in round one (no one is denying it) then it was just a balancing of their Karmic Ledger.
Though, apparently not, because they have been horribly unlucky against the Panthers.
They have – minimum – seven posts so far in this series, and even though they are being goalied by the most unlikely of goalies, the sheer amount of posts and crossbars they’ve hit is baffling.
They were the better team in both games one and two, and deserved to be up 2-0, not down 2-0.
If your best player has a night off, your starting goalie gets injured and the refs destroy you, and you still force OT and give yourself a 50% chance at a win, that's probably a sign you're a good team, not a bad one.
— Editor in Leaf (@EditorinLeaf) May 8, 2023
Why can't this city get behind a team for once?
As for last night, Matthews opened the game by ringing one off the post, then disappeared. The coach was brutal, playing Luke Schenn almost as much as Matthews, and Sergei Samsonov left the game with an injury.
Most ridiculous of all, the Leafs did not receive a single power-play the entire game. An atrocity of officiating denied them a reasonable chance to come back in this series.
And yet, for all that, they still made it to overtime and had a coin-flip chance to get back in the series.
It was not to be, and as frustrating as it was to watch everyone from Matthews to O’Rielly perform like garbage, they still almost pulled it off.
I think this team has proven they can make spectacular and unprecedented comebacks. I know it’s unlikely, but I am not counting them out yet. I think they can win game four easily, head back to Toronto and take game five.
Next. Playoff Predictions. dark
After that, it’s anybody’s series.