Leafs fan here daring to come in peace. Let me start by congratulating your team and your franchise for last night. There was a reason I dreaded facing Tampa over any other team in the first round, knowing how stronger the Leafs seemed to be this year but also knowing that Tampa simply has had an incredible run and seasoned core with those intangibles needed to be champions. That was apparent more last night than in any other game.
Your team totally suffocated our offense and overall, despite my horror at the disallowed goal and questionable non-calls particularly in the last couple games, I simply cannot deny that Tampa just outplayed us last night. Beating us to pucks, neutralizing our offense by clogging the center of the ice to prevent our preferred cross crease passes which forced it to the point where your defense simply blocked it without fuss, a far more purposeful power play that terrified me whenever they had possession.
Your team knows how to distill their game to simplest and most essential plays, especially to the net while all last night our clan of jokers were passing up open lanes and opportunities in the slot hoping to just pass the puck into the net. You outplayed us when it mattered most and whatever arguably dodgy officiating our fanbase might be moaning about cannot undo that fact.
I think you all should know that I personally have had a fondness for the Lightning for many years that dates back to their 2015 run to the finals which was some of the most thrilling and enjoyable hockey I can recall of the last 15 years. I loved watching the Triplet line with an emerging Kucherov and Tyler Johnson back when he was good, I was gutted when Chicago won against a banged up Bishop. Both in 2020 and 2021 after my dear Leafs inevitably choked out of the playoffs the Lightning were the team I backed the whole way and was ecstatic in 2020 that not only you finally won but you snuffed out the totally unworthy and lucky Stars team of that year and of course witnessing you pummel Montreal and burst their Cinderella bubble was especially delicious for us Leafs fans.
I say all this as a Leafs fan in grief at another year of futility, at another year of record setting hopelessness, but finding in the midst of that the most painful aspect is not the familiar numbness of defeat but the overwhelming glee and pleasure of the rest of the hockey world, certainly the entirety of Canadian fanbases, and essentially everyone else stomping on our grave, kicking us when we're down. I've observed in this thread alone the sheer number of posts specifically pointing at and mocking the reaction of devastated Leafs fans, specifically Steve Dangle (who I think only damages the perception of the Leafs fanbase but that's for another day).
My question becomes...why such rejoice at defeating us and reveling in our humiliation? We're not the Yankees, we haven't won the most championships in history, we haven't won a cup in 55 years, we haven't won a series in now 19 years at least. We have nothing except the size of our city and therefore our market, which individual Leafs fans have no control over. When does the weight of that legacy of failure outweigh the desire to laugh at our misery I wonder? It's an honest question that I'd like an honest answer to.
I would speculate that probably it's the sheer size of our fanbase that makes certain topics of ours over represented and shrill to other fanbases. That's not something I can personally control, the larger the fanbase the larger the raw number of bad apples there will be. But ours is not mostly shallow bandwagoners, most are grizzled and damaged from our years of failure that are if not downright venomous to our own team. If it's arrogance, I can only hope my post can dispel that perception, at least among you Lightning fans.
Sorry for the massive post, I suppose I needed to get some of this off my chest to process the loss. Once again, I salute your team, and I really hope you Lightning fans do not for a second take for granted this team and this generation of players, I would give anything to taste a fraction of the pleasure your fanbase has had over the past few years, it's truly one of a kind and something to be treasured. I wish them all the best, and hope Point can recover enough to start another Conn Smythe performance, but hoped my team was there more.