5 Reasons For Toronto Maple Leafs Fans to be Optimistic
By David Agnew
One More Year of Experience
Pessimists will say that the Toronto Maple Leafs crashed out of the Stanley Cup Playoffs once again. Optimists will counter with the fact that Toronto finally broke its 1st round playoff jinx with the series victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning.
In either case, the team gained another year of experience, which can only help in next season’s quest for a championship.
Sometimes a team comes out of nowhere to win a Stanley Cup (hello Vegas Golden Knights), but usually it takes many years for a team to develop what it takes to be a champion.
The Washington Capitals of the Alex Ovechkin era are a prime example.
The Caps lost in the Stanley Cup finals in 1998, then didn’t win a single playoff round until ten years later (Ovechkin was drafted in 2004).
It was another ten years (2018) before the team made it past round 2, and they finally won their first and only Cup that year.
Washington, like the current Maple Leafs squad, was a very good regular season team for ten years before winning the Cup.
They won at least 50 games four times in that period. The core of the team (Ovechkin, Kuznetsov, Backstrom, Carlson, Oshie) was together a long time before winning it all.
Whether it’s learning to deal with pressure, learning to adapt to playoff style hockey, or perhaps building a certain camaraderie with teammates, experience can take a team a long way.