If the Toronto Maple Leafs upset the Washington Capitals in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, it’s going to bust an awful lot of brackets. You’ll be hard-pressed to find any one other than a die-hard fan of the team that has picked Toronto over the Cup-favourite Caps — and even many of those folks probably can’t fathom what would be the biggest shock in the opening round.
You might say that just getting to the playoffs makes for a successful season for the Leafs, and you wouldn’t be wrong. It’s the first time Toronto qualified in a full, 82-game season since before the 2004-05 lockout and their second time getting in since the shortened 2012-13 season when the team had a much different core.
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With a roster packed full of rookies, Toronto drew the toughest matchup of any team in Round 1 in the Washington Capitals, a deep, veteran-laden squad with an urgency to win now. But while the Leafs are happy to be here and, really, playing with house money at this point, they’re not just going to roll over and be content with a quiet first round exit.
“You don’t even want to think like that, but what you have to look at is the season has been a success,” said Leafs GM Lou Lamoriello on Prime Time Sports Wednesday evening. “The season has been a success because of the development, because of the adjustments, and because of the bright future that the core that is beginning to establish itself will be here for a period of time because of the age group.
“We find ourselves with a tremendous opportunity right now once you get in the playoffs.
“We’re in the playoffs to win. The coaches are in to coach to win. Yes we’re playing, in our opinion, the best team in the National Hockey League, but we’ve seen what happens in past history. All we have to do is continue to do what we have been doing. The players know what it’s going to take and they have to get that will to have success and know that they cannot make many mistakes.”
Twenty-three points separated the Leafs and Capitals in the standings, which indeed is a big gulf, but nothing like the canyons that used to exist between the top and bottom seeds in a conference. Take, for example, the 1982 Edmonton-Los Angeles series, two teams that were separated by 48 points in the regular season. The Kings won that series — which included the Miracle on Manchester — for one of the greatest upsets of all-time.
If the Leafs did topple the Caps in this Age of Parity, it would certainly be a monumental upset, but not an all-timer. The gulf between them is large, but traversable.
“They’ve got a lot of experience,” Lamoriello said. “I think if you look at them and they’ve been built, if you want to say, for the playoffs, and they have been doing that for the last several years. The goals scored there’s not much of a difference as you can see — where the difference is the goals that have been given up. It’s going to be our job and our responsibility to make these tight games and allow the end result to take care of itself.”
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That may be easier said than done for the Leafs, but the thinking behind it is simple. Play disciplined, play smart, play with speed and play responsible at both ends of the ice. Keeping it close means a fortunate bounce or a timely power play could be the difference between this series going chalk, or shocking the world.
And if it turns into a run-and-gun series, the Leafs will be right in their wheelhouse.
“From past experience, whenever you were the favourite team going into the first round, I think the most dangerous round you played was always the first round, the toughest round to get through is the first round,” Lamoriello said.
“I don’t know what they think and how they think, all I know is the first round is the most difficult no matter how you finish, the way you finish. But even more so, because you’re expected to do certain things and it is tougher than you think.”
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