The Leafs went toe-to-toe with the Lightning, pushed them to brink, and gave them everything they could handle until the buzzer rang to end game 7. They got beat. The did not choke. Plain and simple.
So as a general rule I don't have a lot of time for terms like "choke" because they're going to mean different things to different people and ultimately that becomes the dispute more than what actually happened but I do think there are two sort of important points there:
1. It's indisputable that the Leafs have had a bunch of opportunities to win series over the last few years and in virtually none of them have they come out and played a great game. That's true about Columbus, it's true about the three games with Montreal, it's true about the two this year, etc. As a Leafs fan that's obviously frustrating but it also kind of doesn't need to be said because if they had played great in any of those games the streak would be over. I understand the temptation to see that as a pattern and try to diagnose the why of that as some sort of inherent problem.
2. The problem with that line of thinking is as we saw with the Lightning, who everyone will call the greatest thing since sliced bread if they beat the Avs, no team can just summon up a great performance when they need one. The Lightning weren't great in either game 6 or game 7. They were just good enough to win. Their B or B- games beat the Leafs B or B- games when it counted. If being great in big games was something teams with indefinable "champion" characteristics could just manifest through grit and leadership, the Lightning would have.
2.