The Toronto Maple Leafs have ironic style in target songs.
When a Leaf lighting fixtures the lamp at house, it’s celebrated to the dulcet tones of Nineteen Eighties duo Corridor & Oates crooning their vintage “You Make My Dreams (Come True).”
By no means thoughts that the song was once recorded ahead of somebody at the roster was once born. It additionally performs like a sarcastic nod to the truth that no longer since 1967 have the Maple Leafs fulfilled their fanatics’ long-held hopes of some other Stanley Cup victory.
It’s a historical past Toronto is painfully, aware of as a result of — like some other ’80s vintage via Bare Visuals can attest — there’s at all times one thing (or somebody) there to remind the Leafs of all of the franchise hasn’t accomplished since its true glory days.
That sting of unmet expectancies has simplest heightened in recent times.
Is there explanation why to consider this month might be any other? Or is it the similar timeless condition for Toronto?
A QUICK REFRESHER: The Maple Leafs group has received 13 Cups for the reason that Toronto Arenas hoisted the 1st one in 1917-18, and the Leafs picked up their most up-to-date 4 titles over a seven-year span within the Nineteen Sixties.
This was once all ahead of the NHL expanded time its Unedited Six year. That got here the season next Toronto received its utmost Cup; the league added six groups and the Leafs launched into what has change into the NHL’s longest lively streak with no championship (55 years — and counting).
Rapid-forward to 2016. Toronto was once intended to begin turning a nook. The Leafs drafted Auston Matthews next a bottom-dwelling 2015-16 marketing campaign, Mitchell Marner and William Nylander have been able to attach the NHL ranks, and ideology have been lofty as soon as once more that Toronto may regain contender condition.
They usually did, form of. The Leafs have steadily completed lofty within the league standings and feature made the playoffs each yr with that core. However Toronto hasn’t received a unmarried postseason around, no longer in 5 directly best-of-seven sequence. (They even misplaced in that best-of-five play-in alternative right through the COVID-19 bubble revel in.)
The Leafs have tinkered. They’ve adjusted. They’ve mentioned all of the proper issues and not made excellent on them when it mattered. So, each spring the similar mantra returns: That is the yr they’ll get it proper.
Proper?
Right here they’re once more to determine. Toronto is taking at the Tampa Bay Lightning within the first around for a 2d consecutive season. The Lightning eradicated the Leafs in seven video games utmost month. Each groups are other now, regardless that. Enough can trade in a calendar yr.
Such was once the optimism in Leaf Land, proper up till the puck dropped Tuesday night time in Game 1. Toronto fell tardy simply 1:19 into the 1st length and in the end misplaced 7-3. The Web expectedly exploded with a landslide of takes on how the Leafs are already cooked, doomed to copy their development forevermore.
Will that be the case? Received’t any of that regular-season good fortune Toronto skilled (completing fourth general in issues with 111) elevate over — and doubtlessly information them thru — to a sequence win?
The Leafs can’t have enough money any lesser outcome. Common supervisor Kyle Dubas, a key architect in developing this crew, is on an expiring word that might not be renewed if Toronto can’t display that their postseason shelf past is longer than the typical quart of milk.
Listed here are 4 causes to consider:
Underneath power
Toronto hasn’t lacked probabilities within the time.
The Leafs held a sequence supremacy in 4 in their utmost 5 best-of-seven appearances (the lone exception was once in 2017-18 in opposition to the Boston Bruins). It’s no longer hanging an opponent at the ropes that’s been their weakness; it’s failing to land the knockout punch.
The shortcoming to complete in Recreation 6 and seven has historically been an eyesore. Toronto’s report in Video games 1-5 of the ones complete playoff rounds (no longer together with Tuesday’s outcome) is 13-12, with 3.08 targets in step with sport and a powerful 20.3% good fortune charge at the talent play games.
In Video games 6-7? 1-8 report. 2.00 targets in step with sport. And a whopping 4.8% power-play share.
That’s no longer what you need. However most likely Toronto can be told a lesson about how no longer simplest to begin, however end, a sequence with urgency. Remove utmost season, as an example. Toronto close out Tampa Bay 5-0 in Recreation 1, and nonetheless would up shedding in seven. This yr, an reverse state of affairs may well be within the Leafs’ playing cards.
Toronto was once a resilient workforce within the steady season. The Leafs misplaced consecutive video games in legislation simplest two times (and no longer since January) age recording the fourth-most come-from-behind wins (17) within the NHL. That’s testomony to how they treated depression over an extended stretch and located tactics to win with the percentages stacked in opposition to them.
The Leafs additionally fasten for the fifth-most one-goal victories (21), some other conceivable indication Toronto is best fitted to extra tightly contested battles forward — and terminating them out — than in seasons time.
The core of the core
Marner is only one piece of the puzzle. However he’s a large one.
Most often, Marner will get lumped in with Matthews and Nylander beneath the “Leafs’ young core of perennial playoff underachievers” banner. It’s no longer completely erroneous, both.
Matthews leads the league in targets (299) since he arrived in 2016-17, however entered this postseason forty first in playoff markers (17, thru 39 video games) over that very same stretch.
Marner is tenth general in issues (554) in the similar regular-season span. All over the postseason, he ranks 59th (33) and has failed to attain a unmarried target in any of Toronto’s removing video games.
And Nylander? He averaged 0.84 issues in step with sport within the steady season, shedding to 0.77 come playoffs.
The numbers haven’t added as much as postseason good fortune for Toronto. Marner may supremacy the fee in converting that. He’s already appearing why.
Marner paced the Leafs with 3 assists in Tuesday’s loss, age logging a team-high 23:06 month on ice. Toronto had few positives to whip from that demoralizing defeat, however Marner’s efficiency is significance referencing as a good.
That’s unsurprising, given the resplendent steady season Toronto’s top-line winger create. His 69 assists (fasten for fourth maximum within the league) and 99-point try left Marner one shy of being the fourth Leaf ever to ever 100. The 25-year-old by no means let up, going with no level in consecutive video games simplest two times all season.
What Marner highlighted maximum was once all of the tactics he can exploit the contest, no longer simplest from a playmaking and scoring viewpoint however via being a difference-maker in each section of the sport. Marner has blossomed defensively, he’s tenacious on pucks (well-known the NHL in regular-season takeaways with 104) and will force any crease — and maximum teammates — to prosperity.
Leafs mentor Sheldon Keefe might be depending on that skill once more come Recreation 2. Michael Bunting most often skates along Matthews and Marner, however he’s been suspended 3 video games for an unlawful take a look at to the pinnacle of Lightning defenseman Erik Cernak in Recreation 1. So it’ll be Calle Jarnkrok again in a top-line spot in search of a few of that Marner witchcraft to wipe off on his sport.
There’s such a lot Marner can do with and with out the puck. All that creativity, elusiveness and general consistency will have to in the end translate ceaselessly to the postseason, and it’s by no means felt like Marner was once extra primed to kill on the most crucial month of yr than he’s now.
A goalie to consider in
The Leafs discovered a real Negative. 1 goaltender in Ilya Samsonov. And he had a impressive steady season. That wasn’t how Toronto drew it up essentially. It’s additionally what made Samsonov’s efficiency in Recreation 1 so perplexing.
In the back of a lackluster Leafs protection, Samsonov was once shellacked for 6 targets on 29 photographs for a .793 SV%. That was once thru simplest 40 mins; rookie Joseph Woll changed Samsonov within the 3rd length.
Keefe is using with Samsonov for Recreation 2, regardless that. His general frame of labor calls for it.
When Dubas overhauled the Leafs’ goaltending utmost summer time, it was once two-time Cup champion Matt Murray — bought from the Ottawa Senators with two years difference on his word — projecting because the Leafs’ then starter. Samsonov was once a detached agent signee accepting a one-year do business in to guess on himself.
It didn’t whip lengthy for Samsonov to thieve the display.
Murray has been plagued via trauma problems all over his occupation and this season was once negative exception, as hip, ankle and concussion issues held him to simply 26 appearances. That may were a nightmare state of affairs for Toronto had Samsonov no longer stepped up.
In 42 regular-season showings, Samsonov went 27-10-5, with a .919 SV% and a couple of.33 GAA. The ones rank within the height 10 amongst NHL goalies with a minimum of 15 begins this season and are occupation highs for Samsonov.
Although Murray have been wholesome going into the postseason — which he was once no longer — Samsonov earned the proper to be Toronto’s go-to man.
Toronto has been run aground in earlier postseasons via swiftly broke goaltending. Utmost yr, starter Jack Campbell went from shutting out Tampa Bay in Recreation 1 to being pulled in Recreation 4 next permitting 5 targets, upcoming produced a below-.900 SV% with a probability to get rid of the Lightning in Recreation 5. Once more, it’s no longer about how Toronto’s goaltender has been early on in a sequence; it’s how he’ll carry out when the stakes are best possible that counts.
Samsonov can scribble a untouched narrative. Granted, the 26-year-old has just one playoff win to life (he was once 1-4-3 thru two postseason sequence with Washington in 2021 and 2022) however he’s additionally by no means carried out higher — or extra persistently — than this season.
There’s a laid-back perspective to Samsonov completely matched for a town obsessive about getting over the first-round hump. The power that may have derailed alternative goalies doesn’t appear to have an effect on Samsonov the similar approach. If Samsonov can rebound from Recreation 1 and be as excellent — and even higher — on this postseason than he was once the utmost 8 months, Toronto could have one much less (severely remarkable) factor to fret about.
Enviable intensity
Toronto has attempted for years so as to add impactful intensity items in the summertime and extra particularly on the industry cut-off date. That is when to turn they’ve succeeded at doing each.
Dubas spied Zach Aston-Reese within the offseason and presented him a certified tryout. Aston-Reese grew to become that right into a one-year word and was an integral a part of the Leafs’ bottom-six ahead workforce.
Jarnkrok was once an under-the-radar detached agent signing who temporarily morphed into a flexible top-nine piece for Keefe to shuffle all over the lineup with excellent good fortune in every single place.
Toronto didn’t wastage month right through cut-off date season, both.
Dubas scooped up Ryan O’Reilly and Noel Acciari from St. Louis, and each were reliable. O’Reilly carries Cup-winning and Conn Smythe credentials, and slides across the height 9 to present Toronto a number of seems to be.
Acciari has been a convincing good fortune within the backside six. He’s were given scoring contact, grit and finishes exams in some way that nearly earns a status ovation on a per-shift foundation in Toronto.
Sam Lafferty — introduced in with defenseman Jake McCabe from Chicago — has added underrated pace in a bottom-six spot.
And talking of blueliners, the Leafs have had virtually too many our bodies to choose between there. Dubas bought Luke Schenn (the league’s regular-season hits chief, with 318) from Vancouver, and he and McCabe have labored their approach right into a steadier, extra decent rotation than Toronto has wielded in years (the Leafs ranked 7th in each targets in opposition to and photographs in contrast season, a testomony to how their combined again finish got here in combination).
Recreation 1 rarely represented that workforce at their preferrred. Mark Giordano was once credited with 3 giveaways, T.J. Brodie with two. The Leafs may slightly lead to unclouded their very own zone — let lonely issue into extra certain performs up the ice — and hung Samsonov out to juiceless time and again.
It was once an uncharacteristically putrid efficiency. Toronto will have to beef up defensively from right here. The Leafs have intensity to faucet into. Toronto’s learners upload girth the place in the past the Leafs have been incline. An infusion of various kinds of avid gamers to the lineup this season made the Leafs extra unhealthy than the crew Tampa Bay noticed three hundred and sixty five days in the past. Occasion Toronto’s core of proficient stars will wish to thieve the highlight, they’ve a strong supporting solid to assistance keep away from bowing out early. Once more.
THERE’S ANOTHER IRONIC LINE for the Leafs in that Corridor & Oates vintage:
“What I want — you got.”
The Lightning are contemporary two-time Cup champions. They’ve planted flags at the mountain. Toronto has been caught at bottom camp, slightly in a position to climb.
Pundits have predicted ahead of that the Leafs could be other. Higher. Extra able to win a sequence and cross on from there. Toronto has misplaced ahead of in heart-breaking, borderline-humiliating tactics. It will occur once more (particularly if Recreation 1 is any indication). However it doesn’t must.
Toronto has carried out the paintings. The Leafs have all of the gear. The ones years of grief can in the end quantity to one thing certain. The payoff might be that a lot better. It’s no longer too past due.
And perhaps one time the ones “plan the parade” jokes might be adopted via an latest birthday celebration.
