The Toronto Maple Leafs Are Awesome: What Is Everyone So Mad About?

Think back to the Toronto Maple Leafs 2011-12 season.

This is the year before the lockout. It's Christmas Time and Ron Wilson is the coach. The Toronto Maple Leafs are playing the Jets and getting destroyed and Ron looks like he's going to explode.

The idea of building a team around Phil Kessel and Dion Phaneuf is becoming increasingly ridiculous. The team looks lethargic, uninterested and dead in the water. Wilson would hang on until March, but it was clear the team wasn't going to do anything with him at the helm.

Every time I get frustrated with the current Leafs team, I think about how Wilson looked that night.

That year, the seventh straight without the playoffs, came to a merciful end in April, and didn't play another game until after the lockout ended in January.

The NHL had 2 Strikes/Lockouts and in between the Leafs played zero playoff games.

The lockout ended, but the Leafs kept on being garbage until they finished dead last and drafted Auston Matthews.

The Leafs played one playoff series across 11 years. The best year between 2004 and 2016 was the one where they finished dead last.

But that didn't happen by accident. That happened because of two men - Brendan Shanahan and Kyle Dubas, who was the interim GM who traded Kessel to Pittsburgh and made Auston Matthews a possibility.