The playoffs will wait
But if these Leafs are exciting, just wait for the future
Well, it’s not like you weren’t used to waiting. The Maple Leafs have made the playoffs once since 2004, and the last time they made it every Leaf looked like he had been gutted and hung on a line to dry, when it was over. Fast-forward a few hopeless years, and Toronto needed two points to reach the playoffs, just two, and then they ran into a Tampa Bay Lightning team that was desperate enough to stay alive. The Leafs could have made the playoffs. The Leafs lost 4-1. The Leafs will have to wait.
“I think there’s a certain compete level this time of the year that gets ratcheted up,” defenceman Matt Hunwick said. “And Tampa’s obviously a very desperate team . . . we’ll need to elevate our play, and come playoff time, if we do make it, I think everyone will find out just how competitive and driven you have to be.”
“You go over and over the foundation so you know how to play in the big moments,” said head coach Mike Babcock, who added he hadn’t seen this team get tight, until this game. “We can’t let the energy and excitement of the moment get in the way of who we are.”
So, a collapse remains on the table, though neither Pittsburgh nor Columbus will have anything to play for this weekend, and all the Leafs need is two points. Tampa needs every single point, though, and Thursday night the Lightning played desperate hockey. Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point were nails, and since the Buffalo filleting Monday on Washington and Tampa Bay have both made this Leafs team look ineffective. The Lightning worked their way to a pile of high-danger chances. The Leafs couldn’t match them. Not ideal.
So, wait. This city already waited through decades of false hope, of embarrassment, of falling flat on its face. This team was rebuilt in a flash, relatively. Now Ottawa is in, Boston is close, the Islanders and Tampa are chasing, and Toronto needs two points. It’s not over.
You can comfort yourself, of course. This Leafs team feels different, and should be different. There is lots here. Mitch Marner and William Nylander and Auston Matthews are young kings. Matthews led the league in evenstrength goals going into Thursday night, with 31. Only six players have ever scored more than 30 at even strength in their teenage rookie seasons, by the way: Wendel Clark, 1985-86, 30; Eric Lindros, 1992-93, 32; Mario Lemieux, 1984-85; 32. Dale Hawerchuk, 1981-82, 33; and Wayne Gretzky, 1979-80, 37. Three generational talents, a hall-of-famer, and a Leafs Jesus.
Which will be a cheerful thing to think about over the summer if they can’t beat a Pittsburgh team or a Columbus team that are locked into their first-round matchups. Ideally, they need to beat them both. No excuses. It’s still all right here.
“You just have to think about what you can do,” Morgan Rielly said. “If you start thinking about two games ahead, or a game ahead, your brain kinds of wanders to what could be. I think you just focus on what you can do to help the team win, whether that’s a shift-to-shift basis, or game to game, or night to night . . .
“We have a challenge: we have two really good teams coming in, and we have to win. And we know that. There’s no excuses. So it’s up to us, and if we do our job, and we compete and we come in and execute, we’ll be fine. But it’s not always that easy.”
It’s the Leafs. It’s never easy. Toronto needs at least three points plus help to catch either Boston or Ottawa and avoid the league-leading Capitals. They need two to sneak in. Earlier this week Capitals coach Barry Trotz was talking about Washington’s struggles in the playoffs, and he said, “We’ve got to break through to the next level. The past really doesn’t matter — you can’t change the past. All we can do is hopefully affect the future. And it’s no different than the Leafs. I mean, they’re trying to affect the future. The past is done. It’s done. The future is something great.”
The Leafs team that got to Game 7 against Boston in a lockout-shortened season burned out and was taken apart, laying the groundwork for this one. The last time the Leafs reached the post-season in an 82game season was 2003-04, the year before the season-cancelling lockout. It was a greybeard’s doomed assault on the summit. That team added a 36-year-old Brian Leetch from the Rangers and a 41-year-old Ron Francis from Carolina to a team that included Joe Nieuwendyk (37), Gary Roberts (37), Alexander Mogilny (34), Bryan Marchment (34), Robert Reichel (32), and a 38-yearold Ed Belfour in net. The year before they had added a 39-year-old Phil Housley at the deadline, a 35year-old Glen Wesley, and a 40- year-old Doug Gilmour. Nostalgia is a powerful thing.
Well, maybe this era is something that people can one day be nostalgic about. Maybe the Leafs will break through to the next level, and the future will be great. Those Leafs teams 13 and 14 years ago were playing for the Stanley Cup, but they were teams that had no future. This one does, and it’s still uncertain. Just wait.