The Team – Cup Winners at Last?
OK, ok, I hear you, enough with the details, how does the season end? Do the Toronto Maple Leafs finally parade the Stanley Cup down Yonge Street?
Well, let’s build up to that answer. First of all, the Leafs did win the President’s Trophy as the league’s top regular season team, garnering a team record 122 points (just like Mitch Marner – coincidence? – probably!). Forget about the President’s Trophy jinx, though, as that is pure superstition.
By winning the Atlantic Division, Toronto earned the right to play a wild-card team in the first round, which just happened to be……..the Tampa Bay Lightning. But these were not the Lightning of old, and the Toronto Maple Leafs dispatched Stamkos, Kucherov and friends in four straight games. It was a methodical dismantling of a Tampa team that was so strong just a few years ago.
Round 2 saw the Leafs engage the Buffalo Sabres, and it was a back and forth affair with Toronto coming out on top in six games. I’m told that my friend and I drove to Buffalo for Game 6, enjoyed the wings (extra hot, of course) pre-game at the Anchor Bar, and were amazed that even during the playoffs, Leaf fans outnumbered Sabres fans by a 2-1 margin at the KeyBank Centre.
In Round 3, things got kind of weird, as Brad Treliving’s Toronto Maple Leafs took on Kyle Dubas’ Pittsburgh Penguins. The novelty of the GM thing wore off quickly, and the teams settled down to show us why the best game you can name is the good old hockey game. Seven hard-fought games ended with the Leafs advancing to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time since 1967. Dubas cried when hugging Sheldon Keefe in the handshake line.
Finally, the Toronto Maple Leafs took on the Seattle Kraken in an epic battle for the right to chug beer from Lord Stanley’s mug. In the end, the battle was less than epic, it lasted only five games, and the subsequent parade went past a fish market instead of the Hockey Hall of Fame.
You expected something different????