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