New York Rangers (M2) vs. Tampa Bay Lightning (A3)

[Bender]

I think Leafs just need a ‘slightly’ more favourable first round match up to go on a run next year.

Sucks doesn't it. We have to hope for a weaker opponent to advance. With the talent on this team we should be steamrolling everyone.

We're literally watching a dynasty in the Lightning, but sure. Steamroll.

[Nik]

I think Leafs just need a ‘slightly’ more favourable first round match up to go on a run next year.

Sucks doesn't it. We have to hope for a weaker opponent to advance. With the talent on this team we should be steamrolling everyone.

Talent-wise the Leafs aren't head and shoulders above the Lightning or Panthers or Hurricanes or Avs or Oilers or so on. I think that's pretty fairly reflected in their point totals.

And it seems pretty contradictory to say in one post that the Leafs have to hope for a weaker opponent to advance and then say the Lightning were 100% beatable. They were beatable. The Leafs are good enough to beat them. They just didn't.

[bustaheims]

And it seems pretty contradictory to say in one post that the Leafs have to hope for a weaker opponent to advance and then say the Lightning were 100% beatable. They were beatable. The Leafs are good enough to beat them. They just didn't.

Yup. It was a coinflip series, and it didn't land in the Leafs' favour. Arguing that the Leafs didn't show up for games or anything along those lines is just ignoring how impressive a team the Lightning are and how they can dominate games when they're clicking. The Leafs showed up in every game of the series. The Lightning were just clearly better in games 2 and 4 in the same way the Leafs were clearly better in games 1 and 3.

There's a reason Tampa hadn't lost consecutive playoff games in 10 consecutive series before getting off to a slow start against the Rangers - they're that good. Looking at a Leafs team that couldn't beat arguably the strongest playoff performers in the last 30 years or so when they pushed them to the brink - and gave them the toughest test they've had in the last 3 post-seasons - and coming to the conclusion that they somehow choked is just a shocking misread of the reality of the situation. 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.

[Nik]

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.

[princedpw]

I think game 5 of the Leafs-Tampa series was kind of the opposite of choking --- they were down in a key game (a real "must win" game though it wasn't an elimination game).  I was personally feeling like they were going to lose for sure, but they came back and won it while under tremendous pressure.

So it seems like they don't just fold.  So why do they keep losing?  My brain is telling me it is some kind of unfortunate combination of usually playing a really good team as well as some bad luck.  My heart is telling me they are just cursed and I'm destined to be miserable forever.

[Significantly Insignificant]

Don't worry guys. We just need to be more like the Lightning. We just have to figure out a way to get all of our top tier players to sign their contracts for way below market value because of advantageous local tax laws and nice boating weather.

Remember how much it sucked when players signed with teams just because they offered the most money? Glad that's fixed.

I know that your post is meant in half jest, but on a serious side, do you think an after tax cap would be the way to go here?  Based on past posts, no cap at all would be your desired approach, but I think that if they are going to move forward with the cap, then there are some tweaks that they need to make to level the playing field a bit, which is what they said the cap was supposed to do.

[Nik]

I know that your post is meant in half jest, but on a serious side, do you think an after tax cap would be the way to go here?  Based on past posts, no cap at all would be your desired approach, but I think that if they are going to move forward with the cap, then there are some tweaks that they need to make to level the playing field a bit, which is what they said the cap was supposed to do.

I mean, it's a tough question to answer because for every common sense thing you might suggest like "Teams shouldn't ever not be able to re-sign good players they drafted and developed" or "There should be some sort of mid-level exception along the lines of the NBA so that even capped out teams don't have to necessarily get worse" you run up against the fact that the NHL has been emphatic that any dollar that they "allow" a team to go over the hard cap, for whatever reason, they both see as a potential economic disaster because teams don't have "cost certainty" but also as fundamentally unfair to competitive balance.

So of course things like a soft cap with a luxury tax would be better but if the NHL were open to that sort of reasonableness to begin with they wouldn't be where they are now.