Why do we put up with this?
The Toronto Maple Leafs are losers. Objectively speaking, in a historical sense, they are losers. With the Florida Panthers’ defeat of the Washington Capitals in Round 1 of the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs, they end their streak of 24 seasons without a postseason series win, lasting from their defeat of the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Eastern Conference Final of the 1996 Stanley Cup Playoffs until then. This leaves the Leafs with a triple crown of failure, and more.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have gone 17 seasons without a postseason series win; their last win came in Round 1 of the 2004 Stanley Cup Playoffs against the Ottawa Senators. The Maple Leafs have gone 54 seasons without winning a Stanley Cup; their last win came in the 1967 Stanley Cup Finals against the Montréal Canadiens. The Leafs have gone 54 seasons without even appearing in the Stanley Cup Finals. All of these streaks are the longest active streak of their kind, and the latter two are the longest in the history of the National Hockey League.
They are the only “Original Six” member of the NHL to have not won a Cup since the beginning of the Expansion Era (1967–1992). Moreover, the other five members of the Original Six have all won during the Modern Era of the NHL (1992–present), after the Expansion Era additions became wholly formidable: Boston Bruins in 2011; Chicago Blackhawks in 2010, 2013, and 2015; Detroit Red Wings in 1997, 1998, 2002, and 2008; Montréal Canadiens in 1993; and New York Rangers in 1994. The first listed wins by BOS, CHI, DET, and NYR are especially notable because of how they ended 39, 49, 42, and 54-year droughts since their last Cup wins, respectively.
Lastly, the Leafs are the first team in North American sports to lose a deciding game in the first round played of a given league’s postseason for 5 years in a row. They lost Game 7 to Boston in 2018, Game 7 to Boston in 2019, Game 5 to the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2020, Game 7 to Montréal in 2021, and Game 7 to the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2022. By all the given metrics, this is a loser franchise.
That said, this concept of them being failures is uniquely American. In other nations, this problem does not exist there the way it does here. Very frequently, leagues in other nations do not have a playoffs in the same way North American leagues do; when a league lacks a postseason, all one has for purposes of determining a team’s performance is how they did in the regular season. There is nuance to this, though. Take, for example, the English Premier League. For some teams, a successful season is when one wins the regular season title. For other teams, a successful season is avoiding relegation to a lower division following a poor performance in a given season. For even more other teams, a successful season is marked by showing improvement and then maintaining it, following years of disappointment.
In the past twenty regular seasons, the Toronto Maple Leafs have gone from being near the pinnacle of the NHL to being in the basement to — in the belief of some Toronto fans — fluking their way into a single season of “success” to returning to failure to successfully rebuilding to once again approaching the pinnacle. Here is a chart quantifying this:
Why, then, despite such a good showing in recent, are the Leafs still such a laughable franchise to some? What is it about playing in America that paired with the team’s performance to cause a generation of fans to abandon the team, to the point that an initiative was started to generate interest in the team among young fans? Why do established fans even put up with them? Do they not have better things to do? Where do playoffs even come from?
The trophy for winning the NHL’s postseason is the Stanley Cup. It had been commissioned in 1892 by Lord Stanley of Preston, after one of the then-Governor General of Canada’s sons suggested there should be some award for Canada’s best ice hockey team. From 1893 to 1914, games for the Cup were played on a challenge basis; starting in 1915, the National Hockey Association (turned National Hockey League in 1917) and Pacific Coast Hockey Association started pitting each’s champion against the other’s after the end of each’s own postseason This arrangement was able to be made after the then-trustees of the Stanley Cup permitted the two leagues to have exclusivity to the Cup.
In the 1922 playoffs, the Western Canada Hockey League (turned Western Hockey League in 1925) entered the fray, and a semifinal game was created between the two teams from the league that was not the reigning champion. After the 1923−24 season, the PCHA folded, and it went back to being a single round for the championship. The WHL would fold after the 1925−26 season, and from there, the NHL would be the only league playing for the Stanley Cup ever again, starting off by pulling the best team from the American Division and the best from the Canadian Division at the end of the regular season.
Playoffs expanded over time for a myriad of reasons. Differences in schedules occasionally benefitting certain divisions led to calls for playoffs as a means of removing those factors from the question, “Who is actually best?” Also, the desire for money by ownership plus more teams being added to leagues were cause for expanding the size of playoffs across time.
Why do the fans put themselves through it, though? What do they gain? There can only be one winner each year. Assuming a team actually makes the playoffs, that’s a 6.25% chance of winning with coin flip odds alone. It is not as though fans gain anything monetarily; they do not even play.
Truly, only a fan could answer this question properly, so I will leave it to one of the most dedicated Toronto Maple Leafs fans Steve Dangle to answer the question: “This is the best.”
