Maple Leafs forward Matthew Knies scores against Senators goaltender Linus Ullmark during the third period of game one of the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs at Scotiabank Arena.John E. Sokolowski/Reuters
During their near decade of playoff disappointment, the Toronto Maple Leafs have never faced a bad team.
They’ve faced some mediocre ones that they somehow managed to turn into the 1970s Flyers, but never a snake-bitten one. Once they hit the Leafs, everyone has Bernie Parent in net and Bobby Clarke leading the charge. The names change, but the quality of opponent is consistent.
The worst thing you can say about the only team the Leafs have beaten in the Core Four era – the 2022-23 Tampa Bay Lightning – is that they played bored.
Everybody has a big idea about what should change in Toronto, but the most obvious one has never occurred to anyone – that the Leafs needed to start a postseason against someone who is much, much worse than they are. So bad that even the Leafiest Leafs team can’t screw it up.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Ottawa Senators, circa this exact minute.
Nobody expected Ottawa to be great straight out of the gate. The team hasn’t been in the playoffs in a million years. Many of their young stars have never felt real game pressure at the highest level. They were bound to be a little tight. But there’s tight and there’s whatever this was.
Some young teams come out overstimulated and disorganized. The Senators came out like they’d all just been released from the trunk of a car and told to run for their lives. Everything they did happened chaotically, and at high speed.
They might have settled if Ottawa goalie Linus Ullmark had stood up a little. Instead, he let in two of the first four shots he faced. The second of them was off a Mitch Marner breakaway on a camel-through-the-eye-of-a-needle pass from Auston Matthews.
The Leafs needed to do two things on Sunday, and winning wasn’t one of them. They needed to not look like they were about to wet their collective pants, and they needed for their stars to be shiny. They had both things taken care of inside of a dozen minutes.
Once Ottawa realized they weren’t going to come back, they reverted to make-a-statement hockey. Unfortunately, none of their statements made sense. One cross-checking call in a playoff game is unfortunate. Two in two minutes makes it look like you’re not taking this exercise seriously.
By the end of the second period, we’d already entered the “Is this when they all fight?” stage of the contest. The margin was three goals. That’s a hill to climb, but no team should seem more vulnerable to being scaled than Toronto, at home, in the playoffs.
Senators’ Ridly Greig scores a goal on Leafs’ goaltender Anthony Stolarz as Simon Benoit tries to defend during the third period.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
The Senators didn’t even bother trying. Their game plan seemed to be finding a memeable moment of violence to keep the fans up Highway 401 on side. Despite everyone’s silliest efforts in the final minute of play, even that didn’t work out for them. The game ended 6-2 for Toronto.
If this was – pick two decent teams of disparate quality, say Dallas vs. St. Louis – you’d say it was already over. One team knows that it is not operating at the same level as the other, and there’s nothing to be done about it but fall with dignity.
But until new evidence is presented, this is still the Leafs. If they haven’t played any bad teams, they are nearly as inexperienced at being the favourites by a wide margin.
They should have been able to shake the Montreal Canadiens off their leg back in 2021 but couldn’t do it. There have been a lot of low moments for the current iteration of the franchise, but letting Montreal come back from 3-1 down in the series is the lowest.
Toronto is the prohibitive favourite now. Ottawa finds itself in the unusual position of being able to get better and still be awful. That’s how bad it was on Sunday. I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I’d see what kind of odds I could get on Leafs in three.
This is another opportunity for the Leafs to do their favourite team-destroying exercise: thinking about the future.
If Toronto wins the same way on Tuesday, then great, we’re doing this for fun reasons. The Senators will learn that life is pain, and the Leafs are gaining some confidence before they run into a Panthers- or Lightning-shaped brick wall.
But if the Leafs lose on Tuesday, then, oh boy. Then we’re into panic stations in Toronto. Then it’s time for the Leafs’ familiar battle cry – “Not again?!” The only thing the Senators have going for them at the moment is knowing they have a lot less to lose than the guys across the hall.
There are a lot of good reasons to rag on the Maple Leafs. They are an endless act of contrition.
But when things begin to matter, no team in sports takes its supporters on a more harrowing emotional journey. At some point in every playoff, there is a game that convinces you the worst bit is over. It’s all sunny days from here on in. Then the bottom drops out again.
This is that moment. One team had to be terrible, and, for a change, it wasn’t the one you feared. If you’re a Leafs supporter, how great is that?
This version of the Leafs has had bigger playoff wins than Sunday’s, but none that so convinced you that this series was in the bag.
In other words, the next two days will be mildly disappointing for all fans of the Ottawa Senators, and pure torture for anyone who’s been fooled before by the Toronto Maple Leafs.
