Athletics has live coverage of match 6 between the Maple Leafs and the senators during the Stanley 2025 Cup qualifiers.
The Toronto Maple Leafs counsel yet another series of eliminatory series that they should win. They have now lost 13 of the 14 games in the Auston Matthews era during which they had the chance to eliminate an opponent. Five of these games presented blown paths. Five came to overtime. There has been at least one year since 2018. And now everything happens, in the same way, to the same group, based on the inevitable defeat of match 7 of Saturday against the Senators of Ottawa.
I know you know it all. I just wanted to make sure that fans of particularly sensitive maple leaves were lucky to click with horror before going further.
You wouldn’t think there would be a lot of these fans. After all, anyone who has been careful over the years should be completely dead inside. I know I’m sure I am!
In fact, check with a reasonable leaf fan for fast temperature reading.
The incredible thing is that after this match, they will still have two tests to win once against a very intermediate team, and there is no soul on the planet that will believe that they will do it
– Act the Fulemin (@ actingthefumin.bsky.social) April 29, 2025 at 9:26 p.m.
Yeah, it seems right. It’s fun. The playoffs are fun.
But here is the thing: we have already seen this film. A lot. It continues to happen again and again. We now know all the familiar rhythms. The slow begins, the stars that collapse, the vacant looks of a thousand meters, the almost-me, the bad penalties, the Flukey rebounds, the suddenly red goalkeeper on the other side, the unconvincing sound dicks. A small rehearsal is one thing, but it is now an extraordinarily well worn territory.
And although there is undeniably a certain perverse joy to that for certain types of fans, even the most devoted connoisseur of the genre must feel a little disappointed. At this stage, the collapse of Maple Leafs qualifiers are essentially “Fast & Furious” films – always their own kind of pleasure, if it’s your thing, but maybe we don’t need another barely recycled version each year.
So, today, I am here to offer help to the hockey gods when they sit down to write the script for the way it all ends. Listen, we understand, you have difficult work, and offer new innovative ways to make fans of sad sheets cannot be easy. But your work becomes a little predictable these days. Let’s put our heads and see if we can hit this thing.
I have eight ideas on how the rest of this series could take place. I’m going to throw them on the wall and you, gods of hockey, can let me know what sticks. Use whatever you want. Mix and match. Or maybe find something really new and unique. No need to thank me for inspiration, I am happy to do it for the love of the game and a reasonable part of the streaming rights.
Option 1: the usual
Maybe we don’t have to think about it. Maybe the whole premise of this room is imperfect. Maybe we don’t need new wrinkles from the hockey gods. It is a collapse of the Maple Leafs eliminatory series in Toronto, the hot scenario flour of the post-season scenarios. It is comforting food. Just serve the pet, without being creative.
Ask match 6, or close, or at least close enough to offer a little hope to the few fans of leaves still capable of feeling it. Maybe even go with another extension game. Ask Auston Matthews to hit the post for a time or two. Let Charlie Brown do a good race for this football before removing it.
Then comes the match 7, where we have the leafs late 2-0, then we watch the stars spend the whole third period by tightening their sticks so strong that they leave small sawdust paths on the ice behind them. The arena becomes a silent freezing, punctuated by hooks with a hearthrun while the clock gets rid of. Make sure you get some good Mitch Marner blows trying to swallow your own tongue on the bench.
The fact is: do not develop. Play the blows.
Critics would say: We have seen all this before, but the public seems to love him.
Option 2: Non-Doubter
It’s weird to emphasize this, but for all the different times the leafs lost a win-liver match, they never really had one that was not competitive. You could indicate the 5-1 defeat against the Bruins in 2019, but even it was a match before the third.
So why not mix it and the leafs are late 5-0 before the first intermission? Really give these Toronto fans a chance to let them have it. No false suspense or low hopes of a return. Just a total collapse that clutches the 2002 avalanche.
The leafs did this kind of thing quite regularly. Think in 2003 against the Flyers, or the six -stroke match against the Devils, or the infamous rebellion of jersey fans against the Red Wings in 1988. Good honest losses that did not get your hopes. The kind of elimination that seems straight in your eyes while it kicks you in the groin.
Critics would say: It seemed a little cruel, but also a little fun.
Option 3: Controversy
Like our last option, it was a surprising omission of the recent curriculum vitae of the leafs of the qualifying series disaster. None of them has ever withdrew a clearly controversial moment.
This does not mean that fans of the leaves have not complained of the bad calls here or there because it is the NHL and each fans base. But is there something that really lingered beyond the moment? I think the closest you can come is probably Justin Holl’s choice game in 2022 against lightning. It was an uncertain call. But it is certainly not the skate of Brett Hull in the fold.
And yes, we all know why the hockey gods did not want to play this card: they used it in 1993, when a missed call cost the leafs a trip to the final of the Stanley Cup, and that Toronto fans did not carve for three decades and to count. We get it. No one wants to pour gas over this fire.
However, if you wanted to mix things, have Brady Tkachuk Powerbomb Anthony Stolarz on the game point just before Messi-Kicking the Washer in the upper corner for the winner would be a way to do it.
Critics would say: It seemed extremely cruel, but also extremely fun.
Option 4: the recall
Everyone loves nostalgia, right? So, rather than finding a new way of providing the same result, why not pay tribute to past episodes by giving us a remake? After all, if there is one thing that we know about this franchise, it is that they never liked anything more than to make it go back.
For example, you could go back to last year and ask the Leafs loses match 7 in overtime on a strange goal on the scale of the skating rink where their best players are on a poster. Or maybe keep the OT element, but ask one of the senators to recreate the face of Radko Gudas. Maybe we even come back until 2013 and the Leafs exploded a 4-1 lead in the third period.
The fact is that if we do not receive a photo of John Tavares mumbleful “in a way, Bergeron returned” at a team meeting, when we do here?
Critics would say: Fun, but they really lack ideas there.
Option 5: Specific irony of senators
We have not mentioned much the senators in this article because These are the senators Leafs are their own villain in these stories, and the real opponent does not tend to have much importance. But what’s going on if it was? After all, Ottawa has a unique place in the tradition of the leafs qualifiers. Why not dig into this rich history and have Ottawa serve a uno inverted card to finish their provincial rivals?
It would be quite easy to find options. You may have Stolarz abandon a pair of Softies in style Patrick Lalime. Perhaps a senator delivers a long-distance and murcised ping in an overtime arena. Ask Linus Ullmark to tackle the referee. Does Ricard Persson have a son? Find it, sign it to a contract and do it Max Domer Crush the boards to take a major in series.
The options are almost endless. If Hollywood modern has taught us something, it is because the public loves to restart the successes of their childhood without valid reason.
Critics would say: Wait, why does everyone continue to pretend to throw broken sticks in the crowd?
Option 6: Goat
No, not the goat – there is no bigger of all time hiding in this series. I mean “the goat” as we wanted: the guy alone blows the big match for his team.
Again, this conspiracy device was used in a sparingly sparingly in Toronto, where the accent has always been more on the big stars as collective disappointment. We had a few temporary goats, like the OT brain cramp of Alex Galchenyuk or at any time Jake Gardiner touched the washer against Boston in a match 7. But as much as they suffered, fans of modern leaves do not really have their Bill Buckner or Scott Norwood. Let’s give them one.
Critics would say: The post-key scene where the goat goes to another team and immediately won the MVP was useless.
Option 7: The grand finale
If this will be the last series before each fan of the leafs finally leaves hockey and devotes all these overtime hours to play the Balatro, then let’s go out big. No restraint, hockey gods. Nothing like “too much”. This is the gain of a decade scenario, so let’s really empty the rooms.
Let Kerry Fraser redo the game. Bring Sheldon Keefe to say one of his “just fun” patented motivation speeches. Ask the leafs to make their entry by skating through the five holes of Allan Bester. Throw waffles. Make the Craig Berube coach with a paper bag above his head. Let Kyle Dubas sign Mitch Marner to one more extension, with John Ferguson Jr. adding the clause without exchange. Ask Jeff Marek to dig up Harold Ballard so that he can turn off all the water fountains.
The fact is that I want the third period to start with an Auston Matthews exhausted stumbling to center ice, only to hear William Nylander tell him “on your left”. At that time, a portal opens radically and David Ayres watches him on a Zamboni.
Critics would say: Wow, now you feel almost bad for fans of leaves. Set up, bizarre, I almost say.
Option 8: Leafs win the series
I mean, of course, I suppose it is theoretically possible.
Critics would say: I have not seen this torsion ending to come.
(Top photo of Morgan Rielly: Claus Andersen / Getty Images)
