The Toronto Maple Leafs have been among the best teams in the NHL for the last nine years.
Sure, they've never won a division title, a Stanley Cup and only won a single round of playoffs during this time, but since the Toronto Maple Leafs drafted Auston Matthews, they have been a competitive team.
Other teams take forever to get going - the Oilers drafted McDavid a year before the Leafs and just made the finals last year. Alexander Barkov played played in the playoffs just once in his first six seasons. Nathan MacKinnon played just 13 playoff games in his first five seasons - Matthews played 29.
Because the Leafs were so good, so fast, we maxed out our expectations and never really gave them room to grow. Had they not made the playoffs until Matthews fifth season, we'd likely be talking about how they're primed to win right now. But since they did better than that, for some reason we're bored? I don't know, but it seems weird to me.
Why the Toronto Maple Leafs aren't going to break your heart this year
Mitch Marner is playing at a Hart Trophy level. He's playing elite defense and is fourth in league scoring despite hundreds less offensive zone faceoffs than all the players who have scored more.
Auston Matthews has six goals in his last 10 games, after being in a bit of a slump. At one time between the 4 Nations and and the preceding Leafs games, he went on a bizarre streak where he didn't have any goals despite close to 100 shot attempts.
Matthews and Marner have never really taken their games to the expected level in the playoffs, and I think they are overdue to do so. I believe that once the playoffs start, the Leafs 4 Franchise Players and now excellent top-four and their elite goaltending is going to be too much for other team's to handle.
I suspect that the Leafs are going to to go through the Eastern Conference like a hot knife through butter. The fact is, of all the teams currently fighting it out in the East, the Leafs have the highest ceiling by far.
if Stolarz and Matthews get hot at the same time, that's a Stanley Cup. This isn't to say it's a guarantee or that they shouldn't have added at least one more star player at the deadline - they definitely should have - but they're going to win anyways.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are due.