Toronto Maple Leafs and NHL Fans should care more about the regular season

"The Toronto Maple Leaf are losers who have wasted the first eight years of Auston Matthews career."

Now, I don't believe that for a second, but many Toronto Maple Leafs fans definitely do. That is because in the NHL, and in North American Professional Sports in general, we, the fans, have been conditioned and trained to appreciate championships and nothing else.

Win or Go Home. Second Place is the First Loser. Injuries are Excuses and Excuses are for Losers. These are just some of the stupidest things that are ingrained to the very bone of virtually all North American sports fans, up to and including myself.

But why? This is obviously self-destructive, it makes people unhappy, creates a ton of unnecessary pressure, and is also completely arbitrary. That's right - it's arbitrary. There are no rules that stipulate how you must enjoy sports, so if you don't want to glorify the winners of a variance filled tournament that invalidates the previous 82 games and six months, you don't have to.

Toronto Maple Leafs and NHL Fans should care more about the regular season

Look, this isn't going to change anyone's mind, but at least I'll have said my piece.

The way we views sports is dumb. It makes no sense to care more about who wins a tournament that takes two months than one that takes six months and is way harder.

I'm not saying winning the Stanley Cup isn't a great accomplishment, but the best team rarely does it. The playoffs pit teams against each other in a series that is too short to ensure the best team will usually win. The weight that injuries have on who actually wins is absolutely massive.

There is a ton of luck in winning the Stanley Cup.

As for winning the regular season, the best team is far more likely to win the President's Trophy than the Stanley Cup. It is estimated that it would take at least 70 games before luck is less of a factor than skill in deciding the standings. Therefore, it's obvious that the playoffs produce much more random winners.

It is harder to win the President's Trophy because you can't just rely on injury luck to weaken your opponents, or on your goalie to go on a 16 game hot-streak. Those things get washed out over six months and the winner is far more likely to be the best team.

Literally the only reason we care more about the Playoffs is because that's the way things have always been. And I don't expect people to read this and change their minds, but hopefully at least a few people start to think about it.

The Playoffs create excitement and are just way more fun to watch - I get it and that shouldn't change. But maybe we could at least dispense with the all or nothing approach?

Take the Leafs, for instance. Sure, they haven't made it past the second round in eight tries, but they also went 0-11 in games they could have advanced, something which is over 10, 000 to 1 against. They didn't lose because they didn't have a better roster, or because their players weren't good enough, they just got extremely and powerfully unlucky. End of story.

In fact, over the last eight years, the Leafs are one of the top regular season teams. They are also in the middle of the longest period of sustained competitiveness the 100 year-old franchise has ever had. They own the longest streak of uninterupted playoff appearences in the NHL. They have set all sorts of team records over the last few years, and no one cares because they faced hot goalies, got srewed by an assortment of refs, played in the toughest division in hockey, got injured at all the wrong times, and generally just had a Mr Burns Softball Team run of bad luck.

We should care about the Stanley Cup, but we should also be intelligent enough to appreciate a good team that just got unlucky. NO? I didn't think so, I'll just go shout into the void for a while!