YES, BUT ... LEAFS BELIEVE THEY CAN WIN
Don’t count the Capitals out just yet, but young Buds have arrived on big stage
Monday night’s game against the Washington Capitals wasn’t yet five minutes old when it seemed like the yes, but that has trailed the Toronto Maple Leafs all season finally took hold.
Auston Matthews scored four goals on opening night? Yes, but he’s just a teenager and he’s bound to fade over a long season.
Freddie Andersen playing like the No. 1 goaltender the team has lacked for so long? Yes, but his workload has been tremendous. He’ll wear out.
The Leafs are inside the playoff bubble? Yes, but the lineup is shot through with rookies. It can’t last.
And then: Toronto came home with the series against Washington tied 1-1? Yes, but these Capitals were getting playoff experience when many of the Leafs were still in elementary school. At some point, Toronto would be lost in the moment.
Four minutes and 49 seconds into the first period, 2-0 Caps.
Yes, but it was fun while it lasted.
Leafs fans, even at that moment, would have to admit they couldn’t have expected much more from this season. This is a team that finished 30th in the NHL last year, that kept its crop of talented youngsters safely tucked away in the minors while the big club went about the business of losing while not being too obvious about it.
It was a team that suddenly had all those youngsters in the lineup, burnished by the somewhat miraculous addition of Matthews, but president Brendan Shanahan and coach Mike Babcock had long told anyone who would listen that the business of rebuilding the Maple Leafs would be long and difficult and painful. A quick exit from the playoffs in Year 2 of the rebuild would still be much more than could reasonably have been expected.
Yes, but maybe not. When the comeback was completed Monday night, when the Leafs had smothered the NHL’s best regular-season team in the third period and then tied the game on a goal by one of those rookies, it became apparent that the team that was too young to do this is, so far, doing this.
“Obviously, now, if you talk to our guys, our guys think they’re a good hockey team,” Babcock said after the 4-3 overtime win in Game 3 that gave the Leafs a 2-1 series lead. “When you’re playing a good hockey team, I think you gain respect for yourself and the process and you start believing that maybe you can do this.”
There are many caveats to note. All three games have gone to overtime, so it’s not like the Maple Leafs have trounced anyone. And all of those factors that tilted the series in favour of the Capitals before it began still apply: Washington won 55 games to Toronto’s 40, they had the fewest goals against in the NHL (Toronto was 22nd) and the Caps have all of that playoff experience (although, significantly, no Stanley Cup to show for any of it).
But the Maple Leafs will, at the very least, have two more home playoff dates in their return to the post-season, and if nothing else, the city is remembering that it’s bananas for hockey. After having become quite the sports Losertown just a few years ago, with every team mired in a non-playoff funk, the sudden turnarounds of the Blue Jays and Raptors had given Toronto a taste of what a playoff atmosphere in a big market can be like.
But in their brief reappearance, the Maple Leafs have already demonstrated that hockey playoffs are another thing entirely.
When the Raptors were going to the NBA Eastern Conference finals last season, the team repeatedly set and then broke new television ratings records, cracking the 1.5-million mark for an average audience. The Leafs, according to Rogers, had an average audience of 3.6 million for Game 2 of their series on Saturday night.
A couple of hours earlier, when the Raptors played their series opener against the Milwaukee Bucks, the average audience was 451,000, according to Rogers.
It’s a not a straight apples-toapples comparison because the Leafs game was carried on CBC and the Raptors were televised on Sportsnet ONE, a cable channel with a much smaller reach, but it was a stark reminder that, even as the basketball team has taken giant leaps in recent years, there’s a latent hockey fan base that’s been dying for something good to happen.
And it has.
“I love the way we responded when we got down,” said Tyler Bozak, who scored the overtime winner on a pass from Nazem Kadri, who continued his rather shocking transformation into a shutdown centre who can also score a little bit.
“I think, once you get in the playoffs, the seeding and everything doesn’t really matter,” said Matthews, who scored the first Toronto goal late in the first period.
“It’s about who wants it more. And with three games going to overtime, it’s anyone’s game.”
He is correct. The Leafs are crazy-young, but they have given themselves a chance.
Yes, but they believe in themselves.
I think, once you get in the playoffs, the seeding and everything doesn’t really matter. It’s about who wants it more.