How this latest Maple Leafs collapse could end: 8 suggestions for the hockey gods

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The Toronto Maple Leafs are coughing up yet another playoff series they should win. They’ve now lost 13 of the 14 games in the Auston Matthews era in which they’ve had a chance to eliminate an opponent. Five of those games have featured blown leads. Five have come in overtime. There’s been at least one in every year since 2018. And now it’s all happening again, in the same way, to the same group, building to Saturday’s inevitable Game 7 loss to the Ottawa Senators.

I know you know all that stuff. I just wanted to make sure any especially sensitive Maple Leaf fans had a chance to click away in horror before we went any further.

You wouldn’t think there’d be many of those fans left. After all, anyone who’s been paying attention over the years should be thoroughly dead inside by now. I know I sure am!

In fact, let’s check in with a reasonable Leafs fan for a quick temperature read.

The incredible thing is after this game they'll still have two tries to win once against a very middling team, and there is not a soul on the planet who believes they'll do it

— Acting the Fulemin (@actingthefulemin.bsky.social) April 29, 2025 at 9:26 PM

Yeah, that seems about right. This is fun. The playoffs are fun.

But here’s the thing: We’ve seen this movie before. A lot. It keeps happening, over and over again. We know all the familiar beats by now. The slow starts, the slumping stars, the vacant thousand-yard stares, the near-misses, the bad penalties, the flukey bounces, the suddenly red-hot goalie on the other side, the unconvincing postgame soundbites. A little repetition is one thing, but this is extraordinarily well-worn territory by now.

And while there’s undeniably a certain perverse joy to that for certain types of fans, even the most dedicated connoisseur of the genre must feel a little underwhelmed. At this point, Maple Leafs playoff collapses are basically the “Fast & Furious” movies – still their own kind of fun, if that’s your thing, but maybe we don’t need yet another barely recycled version every year.

So today, I’m here to offer some help to the hockey gods as they sit down to pen the script for how this all ends. Look, we get it, you guys have a hard job, and coming up with new and innovative ways to make Leaf fans sad can’t be easy. But your work is getting a bit predictable these days. Let’s put our heads together and see if we can punch this thing up.

I’ve got eight ideas about how the rest of this series could go. I’ll throw them at the wall, and you hockey gods can let me know what sticks. Use whatever you want. Mix and match. Or maybe come up with something truly new and unique. No need to thank me for the inspiration, I’m happy to do it for the love of the game and a reasonable share of the streaming rights.

Option 1: The Usual

Maybe we don’t have to overthink it. Maybe the whole premise of this piece is flawed. Maybe we don’t need any new wrinkles from the hockey gods. It’s a Toronto Maple Leafs playoff collapse, the warm oatmeal of postseason storylines. It’s comfort food. Just serve up the familiar, without getting creative.

Have Game 6 be close, or at least close enough to offer up some hope to the few remaining Leaf fans still capable of feeling it. Maybe even go with another overtime game. Have Auston Matthews hit the post a time or two. Let Charlie Brown get a good run at that football before you yank it away.

Then comes Game 7, where we have the Leafs fall behind 2-0, and then we watch the stars spend the entire third period squeezing their sticks so hard they leave little trails of sawdust on the ice behind them. The arena goes icily silent, punctuated by some half-hearted boos as the clock drains down. Make sure to get a few good shots of Mitch Marner trying to swallow his own tongue on the bench.

The point is: Don’t get fancy. Play the hits.

The critics would say: We’ve seen this all before, but the audience seems to like it.

Option 2: The No-Doubter

It feels weird to point this out, but for all the different times the Leafs have lost a winner-take-all game, they’ve never really had one that wasn’t competitive. You could point to the 5-1 loss to the Bruins in 2019, but even that was a one-goal game heading into the third.

So why not mix it up and have the Leafs fall behind 5-0 heading into the first intermission? Really give those quiet Toronto fans a chance to let them have it. No fake suspense or faint hopes of a comeback. Just a total collapse that makes the 2002 Avalanche look clutch.

The Leafs used to do this sort of thing fairly regularly. Think 2023 against the Flyers, or the six-shot game against the Devils, or the infamous jersey-tossing fan rebellion against the Red Wings in 1988. Good, honest losses that didn’t get your hopes up. The sort of elimination that looks you right in the eye while it kicks you in the groin.

The critics would say: This felt kind of cruel, but also kind of fun.

Option 3: The Controversy

Like our last option, this one’s been a surprising omission from the Leafs’ recent resume of playoff disaster. None of them have ever hinged on an obviously controversial moment.

That’s not to say that Leaf fans haven’t complained about bad calls here or there because it’s the NHL and every fan base does. But is there anything that’s really lingered past the moment? I think the closest you can come is probably the Justin Holl pick play in 2022 against the Lightning. That was an iffy call. But it’s certainly not Brett Hull’s skate in the crease.

And yes, we all know why the hockey gods haven’t wanted to play this card: They used it in 1993, when a missed call cost the Leafs a trip to the Stanley Cup Final, and Toronto fans haven’t shut up about it for three decades and counting. We get it. Nobody wants to pour any gas on that fire.

Still, if you wanted to mix things up, having Brady Tkachuk powerbomb Anthony Stolarz onto the faceoff dot right before Messi-kicking the puck into the top corner for the winner would be one way to do it.

The critics would say: This felt extremely cruel, but also extremely fun.

Option 4: The Callback

Everyone loves nostalgia, right? So, rather than finding a new way to deliver the same result, why not pay tribute to past episodes by giving us a remake? After all, if there’s one thing we know about this franchise, it’s that they’ve never loved anything more than running it back.

For example, you could reach back to last year, and have the Leafs lose Game 7 in overtime on a weird rink-wide goal where their best players get put on a poster. Or maybe keep the OT element, but have one of the Senators recreate the Radko Gudas face-yell. Maybe we even go all the way back to 2013, and have the Leafs blow a 4-1 lead in the third period.

The point is that if we don’t get a shot of John Tavares mumbling “Somehow, Bergeron returned” during a team meeting, then what are we even doing here?

The critics would say: Fun, but they’re really running out of ideas down there.

Option 5: The Senators-specific Irony

We haven’t mentioned the Senators much in this article because they’re the Senators the Leafs are their own villain in these stories, and the actual opponent doesn’t tend to matter much. But what if it did? After all, Ottawa has a unique place in Leafs playoff lore. Why not dig back into that rich history, and have Ottawa serve up an Uno reverse card to finish off their provincial rivals?

It would be easy enough to find options. You could have Stolarz give up a pair of Patrick Lalime-style softies. Maybe have a Senator deliver a long-distance, arena-deadening PING in overtime. Have Linus Ullmark tackle the referee. Does Ricard Persson have a son? Find him, sign him to a contract, and have Max Domi mash him into the boards to take a series-altering major.

The options are almost endless. If modern-day Hollywood has taught us anything, it’s that audiences love rebooting the hits from their childhood for no good reason.

The critics would say: Wait, why does everyone keep pretending to throw broken sticks into the crowd?

Option 6: The Goat

No, not The GOAT – there’s no greatest of all-time lurking in this series. I mean “the goat” the way we used to mean it: The guy who single-handedly blows the big game for his team.

Again, this plot device has been used surprisingly sparingly in Toronto, where the focus has always been more on the big stars as a collective letdown. We’ve had a few temporary goats, like Alex Galchenyuk’s OT brain cramp or anytime Jake Gardiner touched the puck against Boston in a Game 7. But as much as they’ve suffered, modern Leaf fans don’t really have their Bill Buckner or Scott Norwood. Let’s give them one.

The critics would say: The post-credit scene where the goat goes to another team and immediately wins the MVP felt unnecessary.

Option 7: The Big Finale

If this is going to be the last series before every Leafs fan finally quits hockey and devotes all those extra hours to playing Balatro, then let’s go out big. No holding back, hockey gods. No such thing as “too much.” This is the payoff to a decade-long storyline, so let’s really empty the chambers.

Let Kerry Fraser ref the game. Bring back Sheldon Keefe to give one of his patented “just have fun” motivational speeches. Have the Leafs make their entrance by skating through Allan Bester’s five hole. Throw waffles. Make Craig Berube coach wearing a paper bag over his head. Let Kyle Dubas sign Mitch Marner to one more extension, with John Ferguson Jr. adding the no-trade clause. Have Jeff Marek dig up Harold Ballard so he can shut off all the water fountains.

The point is, I want the third period to start with an exhausted Auston Matthews stumbling out to center ice, only to hear William Nylander tell him “on your left”. At which point, a portal dramatically opens up and David Ayres rides over him on a Zamboni.

The critics would say: Wow, now you almost feel bad for Leaf fans. Settle down, weirdos, I said almost.

Option 8: The Leafs win the series

I  mean, sure, I guess it’s theoretically possible.

The critics would say: I did not see that twist ending coming.

(Top photo of Morgan Rielly: Claus Andersen / Getty Images)

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