PITTSBURGH – They say time heals all wounds. That may even apply to those inflicted during the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Here we are just four years, less a day, since the Toronto Maple Leafs authored the biggest Game 7 collapse in NHL history. If you were inside a frothing TD Garden for that unlikely Boston Bruins victory, you remember the feeling almost as well as the outcome.
"You know how that building erupts like that?" Clarke MacArthur, the former Leafs winger, told me recently. "It’s crazy there, it’s absolutely insane. I don’t know if you can get a louder, more obnoxious building than in Boston.
"When they made it 4-2 against us in Toronto, remember the building like exploded? Like when it was 4-2 with eight minutes left, the game should be over still. Crazy."
It was a night that could alternately be viewed as a referendum on Dion Phaneuf’s captaincy, Phil Kessel’s intangibles, Randy Carlyle’s coaching style or Dave Nonis’s ability to construct a contending roster, and it only got worse.
The dramatic loss, in one way or another, expedited each of their departures from Toronto.
It was the last game MacArthur ever played for the Leafs.
Yet as the anniversary passes there won’t be much time for those men to look back and reflect this weekend. They are on to new conquests and adventures. They are all presently on teams about to play Game 1 in the conference final.
Neither Phaneuf nor MacArthur had ever previously played beyond the opening round, and are savouring the unexpected run by their Ottawa Senators this spring. It’s included a series-clinching overtime goal from MacArthur in Round 1 that carried a little extra satisfaction – "especially being in Boston and what I’ve been through there" – and now pits them head-to-head with Kessel, a good friend who is chasing his second straight Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
"(He’s) one of the guys I’ve always kept in touch with and been close friends with," MacArthur said of Kessel. "I texted him yesterday and said ‘the gloves are off now for the series.’"
"There’s no friends out there," added Phaneuf. "I’m sure he’d say the same thing. We’ll talk to him after the series."
They’ve each travelled a lot of miles since sitting in the despondent visitor’s dressing room in Boston on May 13, 2013. Blowing a 4-1 lead in the third period of a do-or-die game is about the worst way you can lose and, yet, looking back now, the sting is basically gone for everyone involved.
Even long-suffering fans of the Leafs – those who once viewed that game as proof the organization was doomed to perpetual failure – have completely turned the page.
The collapse was barely even name-checked when Auston Matthews and Co. returned to the playoffs this spring. Pretty soon, it might even be celebrated because of the new era it helped usher in.
Hope is a powerful thing. It helps you move on.
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Seeing Kessel lift the Stanley Cup last June didn’t come with any bitterness for folks in Toronto, nor did his decision to throw a Cup party in the city a few weeks later. If anything, hearts were warmed when he discreetly brought the trophy to The Hospital for Sick Children as well.
Should Phaneuf and MacArthur or even Carlyle and Nonis – whose Anaheim Ducks face the Nashville Predators in the Western Conference final – win it now, many Leafs fans might even be happy.
It’s a reminder that there are always new horizons to chase. You just need to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward.
Carlyle returned to California after being fired by the Leafs in January 2015 and began scouting games at Honda Center to keep up with the trends and players around the league. There were guffaws in a few corners when Ducks general manager Bob Murray (and Nonis, his consultant) brought Carlyle back to coach the team last summer.
No one is laughing now.
The one thing that opened Carlyle’s eyes in Toronto was the constant level of scrutiny everyone was under – "there’s not too much in-between in those type of environments" – and he certainly took a huge chunk of the blame for the team’s failings.
However, despite the fact that a blown three-goal lead in Game 7 is the defining moment of his tenure there, it’s not a sore spot for him. No Maple Leaf-sized scars remain.
"The team that we had was not a team that was constructed to say that we’re going to wait," Carlyle told reporters this week in Anaheim. "This was the team, this was the people they had in place, and the results – as soon as we made the playoffs in the lockout-shortened year, expectations went up to a level that I don’t know if our lineup was at the same level. And those are difficult situations.
"But hey, it’s a great market to play in, great people to work for. I look upon my time in Toronto that it was a positive. I’m born and raised in Ontario, maybe 300 miles north of Toronto, grew up as a Toronto Maple Leaf fan, was drafted by the Toronto Maple Leafs, played for them for two years, got to coach the Toronto Maple Leafs.
"All those things are positives in life."
Eventually, over time, something good inevitably sprouts from the bad.
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