As Leafs fans we're used to disappointment, we've watched our teams blow leads, get pushed around, fail in big moments. We've been the butt of jokes and laughing stocks of the league for the better part of the last 50 years, but this loss is one that Leafs fans will not be able to shake.
Not because it's to the Habs, and not because we were the clear favorites, but because whether we want to admit it or not this loss signifies the end of what looked like it was going to be a golden era for Leafs hockey, a golden era that died before it ever really started - I'll explain why.
The Modern Past
In modern history the Leafs have been generally bad with brief spurts of excitement, early 90's Gilmour and Co, early 2000s Sundin and co gave tastes of success to a fanbase starving for it, but the success was fleeting and those good teams were never truly great and dissolved back into irrelevance as quickly as they appeared. Through it all management and ownership refused to rebuild, refused to start from the ground up and build a team capable of longterm success. Until finally Shannahan came on in 2014 and the message changed, we were going to do a proper rebuild and fans had some level of legitimate hope again.
The Rebuild
The road through a proper rebuild can be long and painful, but for a Leafs team that so stubbornly resisted it in the first place it was like a dream scenario, the 2014 draft they hit a home run with William Nylander at 8 overall, the next year they hit another with Mitch Marner at 4 overall, and finally the ping pong balls go their way to the land Auston Matthews in 2016. All three immediately serve notice to the league they are/will be NHL stars. And unlike the Oilers or Sabres the Leafs continue to find great young players to fill the roster and farm system to the brim with talent, Hyman, Kapanen, Brown are not only talented players in their own right but also provide PK, defensive play and extreme work ethics. A few young players stagnated or regressed like Johnson or Soshnikov but overwhelmingly the youth developed better than anyone could have hoped. Add in the young established players like Kadri, Rielly and Gardiner and Leafs fans had dreams of not just a good team but a truly great team that could be Stanley Cup contenders for the next decade.
The Build Up
While the young core provided excitement and hope there were still some holes on the roster to be filled, most notable on defense and in net. Frederic Andersen is brought in and immediately provides stability in the crease, Jake Muzzin is added as a physical and shutdown presence on the back end, Patrick Marleau for veteran leadership up front and those moves alone look like enough to set this team on the right path, but they go one major step further an add a bonafide NHL superstar in John Taveras - the time to contend is now.
The Slow Motion Tear-Down
Step 1: Contract Talks
The unfortunate side for Leafs fans of their young core bursting onto the scene so emphatically was salary implications that came with it, and in a cap world there's only so much money to go around. William Nylander is up first, the contract talks stay amicable throughout and both sides are staunch in there position they only want to a get a deal done in Toronto. But they just keep dragging on, Leafs fans see the obvious contract comparables at 6 and 6.5 (Ehlers and Larkin) but the deal just isn't getting done. In the end Nylander misses the start of the season before signing a deal that is a shade higher than hoped at 7 but its a deal you can live with. Matthews is next up, Matthews doesn't want the 8 year deal that his peers signed for, he wants a shorter deal but still wants the same AAV. Eichel and McDavid set the number for Matthews with their deals and Matthews signs in between at 11.6 but for 5 years. Once again as a Leaf fan you don't love the deal but its one you can live with. On to Marner now, this one gets ugly fast. Marners camp (presumably pushed by his father) demands big money, contract negotiations through the media, offer sheet threats, strange demand to be have money "made up" for missing out on bonuses during his ELC. In the end the deal gets done at 10.9 million over 6 years. The extent of the overpay is up to much debate but the implications are felt immediately, the team needs to move out quality depth players in order to stay under the cap.
Cap Casualties
Along with the big money given to the young core and Tavares some questionable signings loom over the salary cap situation. Connor Brown is the first to go, off to Ottawa in order to dump the contract of Zaitsev who wasn't able to live up to the long term contract quickly given to him after 1 year in the NHL. Patrick Marleau is sent packing along with a first so he can be bought out. Kadri is dumped for a cheaper 3C and to reallocate money to the D, and while suspension issues for Kadri are forefront, salary is invariably a factor as well. A flat cap further exacerbates the cap issues as Kapanen is dumped for futures, and Johnsson is dumped for a B level prospect. Suddenly our depth of talent and speed is gone, no longer is our bottom 6 made up of hard working 20 goal caliber players like Brown and Kapanen, instead it's filled with reclamation projects and tired veterans on their last legs. While some have worked out (Spezza), others were just kinda there (Galchenyuk, Vesey, Boyd) and others who remained prominent throughout the season were complete disasters (Thornton, Simmonds). This team would now go as far as the 11 million dollar players would take it, there wasn't going to be much help coming from the bottom.
The Last Chance
In a league with a steadily growing cap the Leafs might have been able to make it work and find enough money to put together a respectable team behind the big money players, but with the pandemic ending cap growth the Leafs are in trouble competing long term. The Leafs quickly went from last place to a good team but now with cap casualties left and right the gap between us and the leagues elite (Avs, Bolts) is slowly and surely widening. While the pandemic did effectively end their window before it ever really got a chance to open it did provide one last golden opportunity to go on a magical run. Individually the Leafs two young superstars finished the regular season 4th and 5th in points and Matthews cruised to his first Rocket Richard trophy. The team quite easily cruised through the season to a first place finish and had an opportunity to face a team that struggled and played below .500 hockey for the last 3/4's of a season. Even more the only other team that really mounted a challenge to the Leafs 1st place finish, the Oilers, were swept away by a Jets team that was downright terrible for the last 15 games of the season. A clear path to not only the teams first playoff victory in nearly a decade appeared but all the way to the semifinals for the first time in nearly two decades - There are excuses to be found any time you lose but in the end the success and failure of this team now rests almost entirely in the hands of its two young 11 million dollar players - and they went exactly as far as they were able to take them.
Auston Matthews: 7GP, 1G, 4A, 5pts
Mitch Marner: 7GP, 0G, 4A, 4pts
Now the only path forward appears to be move on from one of the our young stars and try and get back the depth of talent/speed/hard work the Leafs were forced to dumped over the last few seasons in the teams attempt try and keep them together. The chances of it going as quickly and smoothly as last time are slim to none - Leafs fans have seen lots of retools and patchwork attempts, they almost never go well.
Not because it's to the Habs, and not because we were the clear favorites, but because whether we want to admit it or not this loss signifies the end of what looked like it was going to be a golden era for Leafs hockey, a golden era that died before it ever really started - I'll explain why.
The Modern Past
In modern history the Leafs have been generally bad with brief spurts of excitement, early 90's Gilmour and Co, early 2000s Sundin and co gave tastes of success to a fanbase starving for it, but the success was fleeting and those good teams were never truly great and dissolved back into irrelevance as quickly as they appeared. Through it all management and ownership refused to rebuild, refused to start from the ground up and build a team capable of longterm success. Until finally Shannahan came on in 2014 and the message changed, we were going to do a proper rebuild and fans had some level of legitimate hope again.
The Rebuild
The road through a proper rebuild can be long and painful, but for a Leafs team that so stubbornly resisted it in the first place it was like a dream scenario, the 2014 draft they hit a home run with William Nylander at 8 overall, the next year they hit another with Mitch Marner at 4 overall, and finally the ping pong balls go their way to the land Auston Matthews in 2016. All three immediately serve notice to the league they are/will be NHL stars. And unlike the Oilers or Sabres the Leafs continue to find great young players to fill the roster and farm system to the brim with talent, Hyman, Kapanen, Brown are not only talented players in their own right but also provide PK, defensive play and extreme work ethics. A few young players stagnated or regressed like Johnson or Soshnikov but overwhelmingly the youth developed better than anyone could have hoped. Add in the young established players like Kadri, Rielly and Gardiner and Leafs fans had dreams of not just a good team but a truly great team that could be Stanley Cup contenders for the next decade.
The Build Up
While the young core provided excitement and hope there were still some holes on the roster to be filled, most notable on defense and in net. Frederic Andersen is brought in and immediately provides stability in the crease, Jake Muzzin is added as a physical and shutdown presence on the back end, Patrick Marleau for veteran leadership up front and those moves alone look like enough to set this team on the right path, but they go one major step further an add a bonafide NHL superstar in John Taveras - the time to contend is now.
The Slow Motion Tear-Down
Step 1: Contract Talks
The unfortunate side for Leafs fans of their young core bursting onto the scene so emphatically was salary implications that came with it, and in a cap world there's only so much money to go around. William Nylander is up first, the contract talks stay amicable throughout and both sides are staunch in there position they only want to a get a deal done in Toronto. But they just keep dragging on, Leafs fans see the obvious contract comparables at 6 and 6.5 (Ehlers and Larkin) but the deal just isn't getting done. In the end Nylander misses the start of the season before signing a deal that is a shade higher than hoped at 7 but its a deal you can live with. Matthews is next up, Matthews doesn't want the 8 year deal that his peers signed for, he wants a shorter deal but still wants the same AAV. Eichel and McDavid set the number for Matthews with their deals and Matthews signs in between at 11.6 but for 5 years. Once again as a Leaf fan you don't love the deal but its one you can live with. On to Marner now, this one gets ugly fast. Marners camp (presumably pushed by his father) demands big money, contract negotiations through the media, offer sheet threats, strange demand to be have money "made up" for missing out on bonuses during his ELC. In the end the deal gets done at 10.9 million over 6 years. The extent of the overpay is up to much debate but the implications are felt immediately, the team needs to move out quality depth players in order to stay under the cap.
Cap Casualties
Along with the big money given to the young core and Tavares some questionable signings loom over the salary cap situation. Connor Brown is the first to go, off to Ottawa in order to dump the contract of Zaitsev who wasn't able to live up to the long term contract quickly given to him after 1 year in the NHL. Patrick Marleau is sent packing along with a first so he can be bought out. Kadri is dumped for a cheaper 3C and to reallocate money to the D, and while suspension issues for Kadri are forefront, salary is invariably a factor as well. A flat cap further exacerbates the cap issues as Kapanen is dumped for futures, and Johnsson is dumped for a B level prospect. Suddenly our depth of talent and speed is gone, no longer is our bottom 6 made up of hard working 20 goal caliber players like Brown and Kapanen, instead it's filled with reclamation projects and tired veterans on their last legs. While some have worked out (Spezza), others were just kinda there (Galchenyuk, Vesey, Boyd) and others who remained prominent throughout the season were complete disasters (Thornton, Simmonds). This team would now go as far as the 11 million dollar players would take it, there wasn't going to be much help coming from the bottom.
The Last Chance
In a league with a steadily growing cap the Leafs might have been able to make it work and find enough money to put together a respectable team behind the big money players, but with the pandemic ending cap growth the Leafs are in trouble competing long term. The Leafs quickly went from last place to a good team but now with cap casualties left and right the gap between us and the leagues elite (Avs, Bolts) is slowly and surely widening. While the pandemic did effectively end their window before it ever really got a chance to open it did provide one last golden opportunity to go on a magical run. Individually the Leafs two young superstars finished the regular season 4th and 5th in points and Matthews cruised to his first Rocket Richard trophy. The team quite easily cruised through the season to a first place finish and had an opportunity to face a team that struggled and played below .500 hockey for the last 3/4's of a season. Even more the only other team that really mounted a challenge to the Leafs 1st place finish, the Oilers, were swept away by a Jets team that was downright terrible for the last 15 games of the season. A clear path to not only the teams first playoff victory in nearly a decade appeared but all the way to the semifinals for the first time in nearly two decades - There are excuses to be found any time you lose but in the end the success and failure of this team now rests almost entirely in the hands of its two young 11 million dollar players - and they went exactly as far as they were able to take them.
Auston Matthews: 7GP, 1G, 4A, 5pts
Mitch Marner: 7GP, 0G, 4A, 4pts
Now the only path forward appears to be move on from one of the our young stars and try and get back the depth of talent/speed/hard work the Leafs were forced to dumped over the last few seasons in the teams attempt try and keep them together. The chances of it going as quickly and smoothly as last time are slim to none - Leafs fans have seen lots of retools and patchwork attempts, they almost never go well.
