A LOVE LETTER TO A LOVELESS TEAM

Sam Forrest

Today marks a grim anniversary for fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

It’s been eighteen years since the Leafs beat the Ottawa Senators 4-1 in game 7 to advance to the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. They have yet to win a playoff series since.

Eighteen years.

Our drought from round two can now legally vote. If you took it to Quebec it could buy itself a drink. It’s only a little more than five months younger than I am. This drought is the reason why, for the last five postseasons, Maple Leafs Square has sat silent no more than two weeks after hundreds of rowdy fans gathered with wide, hopeful eyes to watch game one.

In those eighteen years, this franchise has endured countless ups and downs. A nine-year run without an 83rd game, a blown game 7 lead for the ages, and a promising season full of young stars that ended in heartbreak, but also hope.

But most notably, and most recently, that drought brought a collapse against our longest, biggest rival that culminated in five-hundred front-line healthcare workers being treated to the equivalent of a coma patient waking up, unplugging their own life support, and rotting away on the ice.

It hurts.

It hurts to watch, not only as a fan, but as someone who feels empathy for a team of players who want it just as badly as we do. They were all once kids with a dream of hoisting the most prestigious trophy in sports. They worked their entire lives to get to that moment, and they couldn’t pull it off. As hard as it may seem to believe from their performance on the ice, it hurts them much more than it hurts us. But that’s what they get paid for. That’s what they signed up to do the second they put pen to paper and pulled the blue and white sweater over their heads.

We didn’t sign up for this. We didn’t ask for any of it. Talk to any diehard Maple Leafs fan, and although they say that they will stick by this team through thick and thin, they will also probably tell you they wish they didn’t have to.

The mockery, the heartbreak, the constant cycle of hopes being raised and pushed to the brink of being realized, only to be cut off at the kneecaps just inches from the finish line. It’s nothing any sane person would willingly do to themselves. But we’ve never claimed to be sane people.

We aren’t asking for much. Every Leafs fan who was born after 1967 has never known the taste of Lord Stanley. Those of us born after 2004, or those of us who were too young to remember it, haven’t even had the pleasure of getting a quarter of the way there.

Four postseason victories is all we want.

Naturally, if and when that happens, we’ll want four more, and then another four. Heck, if you’ve made it that far, why not grab the last four. But we’re more than willing to take it one series at a time. You can’t win the second round before you’ve won the first. We understand that more than you could ever know. So all we’re asking for is the first four out of seven games.

Whether Toronto ends up playing Tampa Bay or Boston is irrelevant. This is the best Maple Leafs team we’ve seen since 2004, and the winningest team we’ve had in 105 years of existence. We should be able to take a round against either one of our Atlantic counterparts

But we might not.

Is that ok? In the grand scheme of things, yes. Whether or not Toronto wins a playoff round has no real effect on our lives other than the pain we choose to inflict on ourselves by putting our emotions on a team of people wearing knife shoes.

But that’s not true is it? It means everything to us. We didn’t choose this, it chose us. We walked into the casino and were forced to put all our money on black, but the wheel has kept turning up red, over and over again. We are the biggest, most passionate, and most delusional fan base in all of hockey. There is no backing out. We’re in it for the long haul.

With all that being said, I, a lifelong diehard Leafs fan, will conclude my most unusual love letter with this:

Please win.

It hurts so much to go through this every year, and although I will never give up on you, it’s taking everything out of me to get back up every October and do it all over again.

I know you can do it, and this may be your last shot to do it with the core you have, so please, just win.

Please.