2025-26 Toronto Maple Leafs General Discussion

[L K]

I'm from the 80s so conference finals runs have been my peak. I definitely appreciate the regular season success more than I would have a decade ago. This is all entertainment. Watching a good team that falls short is still more enjoyable than being a Columbus or Buffalo.

I know that this is likely over and that there probably isn't a way to retool this team given the lack of prospects and draft picks on the horizon. I just want to see the franchise go down fighting and instead they seem to just be stubborn about how Treliving/Pelley like Bérubé.

The flaws were there last year. They are horribly exposed this year and we sit here and do nothing

 

[Bill_Berg]

The sad part is that if they rebuild the very best you could hope for is that they bat 1.000 on a bunch of top 10 picks, that is, all of which pan out, over the next X years (Matthews, Marner, Rielly yes Rielly, Nylander) and then you'd be back where we were when it all looked so bright 8 or 9 years ago. At best.

Here's how I'm looking at this: I got to see Sundin and his teams play. I got to see the Core 4 play all kinds of superfun hockey. I very likely won't live long enough to see anything nearly this good again.

I'm grateful for all the fabulous regular season hockey I got to see. Lots of fans don't even get to see that.

If we could get back to being where we were 8 or 9 years ago, it would be great. You can't ask for more than that. That those particular players couldn't win is a combination of bad luck and then not being quite good enough, but with a little more good luck, they could have won one.

 

[rdowdall]

I don't know. I think whatever malaise this team has had since the 60's isn't going away anytime soon. I will likely die without seeing the Leafs in a Stanley Cup finals. There are worse fates. But in a life where we have finite time, and that is my goal when I watch the team, I have to question the point of watching now.

As I said, I am done for the next bit. I don't like watching when the team I am cheering for is outclassed most nights, and based on the fact that the organization has said nothing, has no plan, and doesn't know what to do, I do have much hope that anything is going to right itself anytime soon.

Maybe we'll chat again sometime.

 

[cw]

If all teams in the original 6 had an equal chance to win a Cup (and they arguably didn't because Montreal and Toronto had territorial advantages), then each team had a 1 in 6 chance or a 16.7% chance to win a Cup each season.
In a 32 team league, that drops to a 3% chance.
With parity (the cap) and four rounds, a good team like the Leafs 4th place team last year had an 8 to 10% chance to win it all.
The generic chance a team in the 6 team league didn't win a Cup in the next 20 years was about 7%
The generic chance a team in the 32 team league doesn't win a Cup in the next 20 years is about 53%. The generic chance they do win is about 47%

The generic chance a team in the 32 team league doesn't win a Cup in the next 83 (rough life expectancy) years is about 7%

If team management is below average, those numbers get worse for that team's fans.
They'll also decline with more expansion.