As someone who spent a few years going to WHA New England Whalers games at the Hartford Civic Center, I love it!
Carolina!
NP! I’m still a bit bewildered at that whole thread of the conversation.
Great job, Carolina! I didn’t know you had it in you.
And, wow, this has kind of been my dream first round. More than 50% of the low seeds win, and we get 3 game 7s. Two of those go into OT. Awesome. I can only hope the second round is nearly this good.
A few points.
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52 years.
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The last time the Leafs won the Stanley Cup, the NHL still consisted of the Original Six teams. It was just before the first league expansion. It was a time, basically, when you could get into the playoffs just for showing up, and win the Cup if you could play hockey.
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The Leafs haven’t even won a playoff series – any playoff series – since 2004.
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The Leafs are by far – by a wide margin – the richest NHL team in the league. They have money to burn, constrained in recent years only by the league salary cap rules. Their ticket sales are oversubscribed. You can’t get a season seat for love or money. Waiting lists extend, literally, to generations. And with that, an incredible sense of complacency seems to have descended on the whole Leafs organization, one that not even the legendary Mike Babcock, with his record-breaking $50 million contract over 8 years, seems capable of breaking.
HA HA!!! No repeat for you, Crapitals! Go Staalsy!!!
lol i hope dogs gettin a cab home cause we know he aint anywhere near sober:p:D
How are the Penguins doing, by the way? I wasn’t paying attention. I know they were in the playoffs, what happened?
:rolleyes:
Here’s a Hint: Brooks Orpik had more playoff goals than Sidney Crosby this year.
More joking on the bolded, then?
Sorry, but the NY Rangers have been the richest team in the NHL for the last 5 years Toronto is second right now but Montreal has also been in 2nd in recent years.
Crazy to look at the pre-playoff Stanley Cup odds and where we are after round 1.
5/2 - Tampa (OUT!)
8/1 - Calgary (OUT!)
9/1 - Boston (IN)
10/1 - Washington, Winnipeg (OUT! OUT!)
12/1 - Nashville, San Jose, St Louis (OUT! IN, IN)
20/1 - Carolina, New York, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Vegas (IN, IN, OUT! OUT! OUT!)
25/1 - Colorado (IN!)
28/1 - Dallas (IN!)
33/1 - Columbus (IN!)
Here is a look at how the odds of winning the Cup changed over the course of a week. Pretty amazing.
I’m backing the Jackets now that the Caps are out. I attended the very first Blue Jackets game and still have a jersey from their inaugural season.
You’re right, I haven’t been keeping up. The Leafs have historically usually been #1 in valuation but that seems to have changed in 2014 when they were overtaken by the NY Rangers.
However, my point remains that there is a deep-seated complacency in the entire organization that historically has trickled down from the attitude of the corporate bean-counting ownership, and it comes from the fact that they’re in a crazy hockey town where their ticket sales are ridiculously oversubscribed. The Scotiabank Arena (formerly Air Canada Centre) is always sold out for every single game, and they could easily sell three times the arena capacity and still have demand for more (you often see empty seats in the lower bowl during regular-season games, but those are just corporate-owned season seats where no one showed up). Their season seat waiting list is essentially frozen – I should know; I’ve been on it for over 20 years and there’s been basically no movement. Their TV revenues follow the same pattern of demand.
The consequence of this is that whether they win or lose makes absolutely no difference to their revenues (or the enthusiasm of their fan base). Some years ago a senior official in their management – I think it was the GM at the time – made a public statement to the effect that “we really do care about winning”. Aside from the fact that few believed him, it was a remarkable statement for a sports team executive to make, kind of like a bank president proclaiming “we’re not crooks, really”. You shouldn’t have to say those things, and if you feel you do, then something is seriously off the rails.
The situation became so bad that, to be fair, in recent years efforts have been made to lift the team to a more competitive status, like the hiring of Babcock. But it’s really hard to turn around a deeply entrenched culture of lazy complacency, which comes percolating down from management and infects even young new players. Babock claims he’s made it a much better team this year than at any time in recent memory (which is possibly true) and he just doesn’t understand what happened in Boston. I do, at least on a philosophical level.
The Leafs brought in Brendan Shanahan as club president.
They brought in Mike Babcock as head coach.
They had the first overall pick three years ago.
They signed the most coveted free agent last summer.
Their AHL affiliate, the Marlies, won the Calder Cup last year.
They have four lines that cal roll.
You call all that complacency? There was complacency in the Ballard era, and they had success in the 90s. They’re finally on track to build a very competitive team again. There is nothing complacent in the Leafs organization now. The team is young, for the most part, with nowhere to go but up.
I did acknowledge that they’ve lately been making efforts to improve their competitiveness. Whether it will be enough remains to be seen. Babcock lately is using the “I’ve created a terrific team but for some reason they’re just not executing” line. Personally I’ve stopped caring but for fans like you I do wish them success.
But hell, when I talk about complacency, I’m talking about something that has been pervasive way, way past the Ballard era, up until recent times even if one believes that they’re no longer complacent, which I personally do not believe. I do go to games sometimes – or used to – and they’ve often been very exciting and enjoyable, but there were times that just stick in my memory like a bad scar. Like the time I took my son to one of the Ottawa-Toronto matches that promised to be exciting. The Leafs just sat there like bumps on a log and let Ottawa hammer them 7-0, a score unlike anything I’d ever seen in a professional hockey game. Or the playoff game we went to against NJ Devils, where the Devils scored first early in the game, went into their defensive trap routine, and the Leafs went to sleep. There was no further scoring by either side.
Read these quoted excerpts. This is from Brian Burke in 2010. I had not seen this before. I found it while Googling for the quote about “we really do care about winning” which I couldn’t find, and this is not it, but Burke expresses exactly the same sentiments I just did, and even uses some of the same words:
“The absolute insistence on winning was not here,” says Burke, who put together the Anaheim Ducks club that won the Stanley Cup in 2007 … No matter how poorly the team has played the organization thrived as the NHL’s most lucrative franchise. Win or lose, to be a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs meant you were paid handsomely, in the media and league spotlight, and lionized in the public as a demigod.
… “I tried when I got here to embarrass them and shame them,” Burke says. “We talked openly about blue and white disease. We talked openly about complacency. I’ve been able to move the needle on every group of athletes I’ve ever had by shaming them and barking at them and publicly challenging them and I didn’t the move the needle on this group one bit.
Well, a 9 year old opinion piece. I concede there has been complacency in the past: no doubt.
MacKinnon and Marchand are the last two remaining top 15 points leaders left in the play-offs.
After all he’s had to go through the last couple of years, he deserves it.
Well, Lyft drivers do follow me whenever I go out to watch a game.
Ok, that Tarasenko goal was so pretty, I don’t mind it being a game winner. I’m just hoping STL doesn’t have 3 more in them. That was a pretty chaotic game.
I know we sucked in the playoffs. But Washington losing at eases some of the sting. And I like Brooks Orpik. He was always one of my favorites here.
You know NOTHING about Fleury’s position in Pittsburgh. Dude will ALWAYS be a Penguin. He still gets cheers when he comes here. People chant his name during warm ups.
Do NOT insult the Flower on my watch.