Toronto Maple Leafs: No Pressure Now, Everything Is Gravy

The Toronto Maple Leafs begin their climb up that hill tomorrow night in Florida.

The Toronto Maple Leafs might be down 3-0, but they aren’t playing like a team down by three games.

They were the best team in both of the first two games, they just got goalied.  They didn’t have it Sunday night, but at the same time, when the other team has their best game, your goalie gets injured and you don’t get a single power-play, and you STILL make it to overtime, you have to feel pretty good about yourself.

The Leafs can’t play worse, and Florida can’t play better, and all it got the Panthers’ was an OT coin-flip.

The Leafs know they could be up 3-0 in this series playing the exact same way they have played, and they also know they are the best team.   So they should be able to do it.

But beyond that, there are other reasons to believe.

Toronto Maple Leafs: No Pressure

Now that there is no pressure, the Leafs can relax, and in hockey, that usually means a ton of goals.

The Toronto Maple Leafs best players have – on average – been exceptional in these three games.  They just didn’t get any goals because Bobrovsky has been playing out of his mind.

Well the Panthers have won six in a row, which is insane.  They are now due to lose a bunch, because they aren’t that good of a team.

The Toronto Maple Leafs can take advantage, the shooting percentage is guaranteed to go up.  The power-plays are bound to occur.

But most of all, there is no pressure.

Everyone is counting them out.  They are all but being fired and traded as we speak (by the imaginations of their worst fans, but still).

But they aren’t out.

They aren’t done.

This team has no quit, and that was before it got Ryan O’Reilly.

Auston Matthews hasn’t had his moment.

And Joseph Woll can make himself into a millionaire overnight.

He can go from no really being an option for a starting goalie next year, to being the next Jordan Binnington (though one assumes, a nicer version).

I may just be an optimistic fool, but I believe this team is, at the very least, going to make a series out of this. I love this team. I can’t see them going down this way.

In game four, I fully expect them to blow the Panthers out of the water.  I expect things to work out because they’ve paid their dues and it’s time.

Go Leafs!