The Toronto Maple Leafs have been good for a decade now, and in fact are in the middle of the longest streak of sustained success they have ever had in their 100 + year history.
The author of this success has been written out of the story, and the Toronto Maple Leafs board of directors sided with Brendan Shanahan who promptly turned the team over to a guy who doesn't like making trades and who seems to manage based on name-recognition and nothing else.
While that sounds like a recipe for disaster, the Leafs turned out to be almost idiot-proof in their design, so things are going pretty well.
The Leafs are sitting just outside first place in their division, and while any honest analysis paints a pretty lousy picture of a capped out team without any assets to improve, no depth scoring, only 2 x NHL centres and a bad blue-line, this is the NHL so there's a good chance this is their year.
An Extremely Positive Article About how the Maple Leafs Can Win the Stanley Cup
The Washington Capitals were one of the NHL's best teams for years. Then they stumbled, things were not looking good, and then they won a Cup they weren't at all expected to win. The problem in pro sports is that you can't just build a good team and wait for it to overcome bad luck.
One instance of bad luck is OK, two is doable, but after that, as we have seen, the wheels fall off. The Leafs had - by far- the best roster in the NHL after they traded for Ryan O'Reilly, but they got unlucky.
Had they defeated Montreal in 2021, and I believe they dominated several elimination game overtime periods they eventually failed to score in, they'd likely already have a Cup. But they don't, and literally no one cares if they played good and lost.
But the randomness of the league that was their undoing will ultimately save them.
The Leafs goaltending has been out-of-this-world, and when it comes back to earth, they are going to lose a lot of games. But maybe this goaltending hot streak lasts all season. And if it doesn't, well the fact that they have Auston Matthews can save them.
If Matthews gets hot at the right time, it literally does not matter at all if the coach plays Ryan Reaves and if Oliver Ekman-Larsson gets the reverse Jake Gardiner treatment (i,e OEL stinks but is beloved) - the Leafs could win.
And if Matthews and one of the goalies have a well-timed simultaneous hot-streak, they will waltz all the way to a Stanley Cup victory. At least right now, becoming a dominant top-of-the-NHL favorite is not in the cards for the Leafs. The great thing about the NHL's Annual Variance Demonstration (i.e the Stanley Cup Playoffs) is that doesn't matter at all.