Wow.
So I'm responding to this assuming you aren't being ironic. If you are, please disregard the following response. However...if you honestly believe the content of your post I'm going to respond to each part and I will be less polite than others have been because this is the biggest bunch of cowardly neutered horseshit I have ever read. Gloves off.
Even the folks that architected this malignant tumor of a hockey team probably don't even truly believe this anymore.
Matthews debuted in October of 2016. Since that time, we have never won more than 5 playoff games in a season. Now, it's evident you don't care about the playoffs at all but I'd like to tell you that it takes 16 wins to finish the journey. Since October of 2016, we have changed goaltenders, depth pieces, defensemen and even coaches. You know the one constant, after all these years? The core. This overpaid, selfish, cowardly, egotistical soft bunch of losers core. They produce when life is easy and give up when life is hard.
The Florida Panthers have been to more Cup finals in the last two years than the number of TOTAL PLAYOFF SERIES this team has won during the entirety of the salary cap era. Why don't you stew on that embarrassing fact for a while and get back to me.
Nope. Maybe in the regular season but no one over the age of 12 should care about that at this point. Do you actually for real believe this shit? Did you ever play hockey as a kid? Did you dream of winning the President's Trophy? No. You dreamed of winning the Stanley Cup, the only team trophy that matters.
Do you think for one minute that Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl care about the regular season even the slightest at this point? No. Of course not. Because they are trying to win and if you watched how freaking unstoppable they are when the games truly matter that you'd realize the same thing.
The Leafs can't win in the playoffs, waaah it's all about luck! Can't be our precious lovely glorious team that's the problem, waaah! ONCE YOU LOSE SO MANY TIMES IN THE PLAYOFFS IT'S NOT LUCK IT'S A FREAKING PATTERN. Sorry you can't see and/or handle the truth.
HOCKEY ISN'T f***ING PLAYED ON PAPER! Are you kidding me?!?!?
Are the Oilers a sketchy team? Of course. Do they have depth and goaltending issues? Of course. But they have guys that can carry them and make up for their mismanagement, guys that are currently massively underpaid compared to the Four Horsemen of the Failpocalypse. Even if the Oilers lose in the finals McDrai are each ten times the player than Flasher McPornstache or any of these other guys will ever be.
Now, since no other team has guys of that caliber, we have to find other ways to win. Perhaps we can add other depth pieces to help pick up the slack during the postseason to take some pressure off the overpaid guys that apparently can't handle the pressure? Uh oh, they consume too much cap space for us to do that! Also, they are paid like players that can take over games and if they can't lead by example that is THEIR problem, not the JAG's that fight for the table scraps of cap space left over by the four Scrooge McDuck's.
OH IS THAT ALL?!?!?!? Not that the playoffs are important or anything, right? Not like it's...oh, I don't know, THE LITERAL REASON WHY YOU PLAY THIS GAME? Well, it's certainly not the reason Mitch does, but it's the reason McDrai do at the moment.
No player, I repeat NO PLAYER, is worth more than the team. I'd trade Mitch Marner, or anyone else in this forsaken clusterf*** of an organization, for gonorrhea if it would make the Maple Leafs better and so should anyone else.
Wait wait wait, I thought we were a super-duper awesome team that is better than the Oilers? Are you telling me that Columbus was as good as us back then, but that we are also now better than a team in the Cup finals despite the fact that our points percentage isn't massively different? How is it that we keep losing to teams better than us if we are so much more awesome than a team that wins rounds more often than us and just now made it to the Cup finals? Hmmm...
WE
STILL
ARE
GARBAGE
WHEN
IT
ACTUALLY
MATTERS
OPEN
YOUR
DAMN
EYES
Who cares? At least when we rebuilt there was a possibility you can create something special down the road. There is ZERO possibility these 4 guys can lead us anywhere as a group with the amount of cap space they consume. ZERO. Once again, I don't need to argue this point because the evidence already has shown it time and time again.
I would rather be rebuilding and have actual hope than be kicked in the dick in the 1st round of the playoffs while the rest of Canada and the entire hockey world laughs at us year after year. This house has fancy appliances, an open-floor concept and spacious bedrooms...and the foundation is set on a nuclear waste dump. It will inevitably decay. That's the reality, whether you see it or not.
You know what winners do? They go out and SLAY THEIR SUPPOSED GODS LIKE WARRIOR BADASSES. They don't make excuses. When the Islanders defeated Gretzky's Oilers in the playoffs in the last year of the NYI dynasty, #99 walked by the Isles' locker room, expecting to see jubilation. You know what he saw? Pain. He saw grown men that had paid the ultimate sports sacrifice, ruining their minds and body to climb a mountain that only a sacred few have earned the right to climb. It was then, and not until then, that Wayne truly understood what it takes.
@Evilhomer is exactly right: too many in this fanbase are easy to please. Fans content with this drivel are one reason why this team doesn't have the urgency they should. This dates all the way back well before Steve Stavro, but do you remember how he didn't want to acquire Wayne Gretzky because "it wouldn't put any more butts in the seats?" Maybe it's time that changes. Have some self respect, pride and standards for once, Jesus f***ing Christ. PARTICIPATION TROPHIES FOR EVERYONE, BE SURE TO LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE! Barf. Barf, barf, barf a thousand times barf.
I cannot believe I wasted my time on this garbage. But more than that, I cannot believe that anyone would humiliate themselves enough to be content with this garbage product. But you know what? If I'm proven wrong and a miracle happens and this team DOES win a Cup? I will be so, so happy to eat crow and be wrong because I care infinitely more about the team than I do about being right on the Internet. I would love to buy you a case of beer in that scenario, anything you want. But don't hold your breath. If these guys had the ability or desire to win they would have shown a heck of a lot more by now than they have.
