The ten worst Maple Leaf playoff games of the last 30 years

Last Thursday, we marked the Toronto Maple Leafs‘ return to the playoffs with a post on the team’s 10 best playoff games of the last 30 years.

It was a simpler time, back before we’d been through multiple overtimes and when we still assumed the Capitals would roll past the Leafs easily. We didn’t even know who Dart Guy was. Look at us back then, we were so young.

Well, fair’s fair, so today we’ll visit the other end of the spectrum, with a ranking of the 10 worst Leafs playoff games of the last three decades.

There’s one important note to keep in mind, though. Ranking a team’s best games is a relatively straightforward exercise. Most playoff runs end in misery eventually, so you just take the games that you enjoyed most as a fan at the time, and there’s your list – with few exceptions, the best games generally hold up well.

But bad games are a little bit trickier, since sometimes you don't know just how miserable a game will make you feel down the line. An especially tough playoff loss is like a slow-acting poison, and you don't feel its full effects until years later. Hindsight is going to play a big role today, especially as we get near the top of the list.

But let's start our countdown a little more than 27 years ago, from a spot just outside the Maple Leafs' blue line.

No. 10: 1990 Norris Division semi-finals, game three: Blues 6, Maple Leafs 5 (OT)

The 1989–90 Leafs team was their best in a decade. That's not an especially high bar, and the team still only finished .500, but they ranked third in the league in goals scored and seemed as if they might finally be building something resembling a winner.

But after dropping a pair of 4–2 decisions in St. Louis, the Leafs headed back to Toronto facing a must-win in game three. They fell behind 5–3 in the third, but fought back to force overtime with two late goals that had the Gardens crowd roaring. An overtime win could have been the sort of clutch comeback that turns a series.

Instead, Sergio Momesso went five-hole on Allan Bester from outside the blue line.

The Blues closed it out in five games, the 1990–91 season turned out to be one of the worst in team history, and the Leafs wouldn't make it back to the playoffs until 1993. Momesso later played for the Leafs, but nobody ever forgave him for this goal.

No. 9: 1999 Eastern Conference final, game one: Sabres 5, Maple Leafs 4

The Leafs' 1998–99 season had already included a 28-point improvement, the first playoff appearance in three years, two series wins, and one Markov salute. Now they headed to the conference final with momentum, home ice and a winnable matchup against the seventh-seeded Sabres.

There was just one problem, and it was the same problem every Sabres opponent faced in those days: the best goaltender in the world. Dominik Hasek had just won back-to-back Hart Trophies, not to mention single-handedly winning Olympic gold. At that point, he was the scariest player in hockey.

And then, hours before game one, a playoff miracle (for Leafs' fans, anyway): Hasek was hurt, and the Leafs would be facing backup Dwayne Roloson instead. It was the perfect opportunity to jump out to an easy lead in the series.

And sure enough, Roloson struggled, allowing four goals. But Curtis Joseph gave up five, and the Sabres stole the opener without their best player.

The Leafs took game two, but Hasek returned for game three and shut them down the rest of the way. The Leafs never seemed to recover from the missed opportunity in the opener, and their third conference finals appearance of the decade ended in five games.

>> Read the full post at ???.com

The ten best Maple Leaf playoff games of the last 30 years

The Toronto Maple Leafs are back in the playoffs. You may have missed it – it was a pretty small story that didn’t get much media attention. But it’s true. Tonight, the Leafs make their return to the post-season, facing the Washington Capitals in the opener of their first-round series.

So today, let’s mark the occasion by looking back on some of the Leafs’ best post-season moments of the last 30 years.

Yes, I can hear you now, mumbling a punchline about this being an awfully short list. And it’s true, the Leafs don’t exactly have the most distinguished track record of consistent post-season excellence. But they have had a few decent runs, more than enough to put together a top 10, even if we’re going to have to lean on a few distinct eras.

(Spoiler alert: There’s going to be a lot of 1993, and if you’re a Senators fan you should probably just hit the back button right now.)

To be clear, this is a list of the best Maple Leafs playoff games from the Toronto fan's perspective. But if you're one of those fans on the other side of the fence, don't worry – we'll be back next week with a top 10 list of the worst Leafs playoff games. By then, there's a good chance it will even have one or two Washington games on it.

But we'll save the misery for next week. For now, the Leafs and Capitals are tied and it's all about the good times. We'll start the countdown roughly 23 years ago…

No. 10: 1994 Western Conference semi-final, game six: Maple Leafs 3, Sharks 2 (OT)

The 1993–94 Leafs' playoff run has an odd legacy. It's one of their deepest in the last few decades, and featured several memorable moments. But it had the misfortune of coming directly after the 1992–93 season, so it's often remembered like a decent sequel that had no chance of living up to the original.

The second round of that 1994 playoffs served up a valuable lesson to Leafs fans who were starting to get a little cozy with playoff success: Beware the underdog. The Sharks had just pulled off a major upset over the Red Wings to win the first series in franchise history, and figured to be easy fodder for a veteran Leafs team. Instead, they took Toronto right to within one Johan Garpenlov crossbar of elimination.

A lucky Mike Gartner bank shot in sudden death extended the series, and the Leafs won game seven two nights later. Most playoff overtime wins are euphoria; this one was just relief.

No. 9: 2000 Eastern Conference quarter-final, game five: Maple Leafs 2, Senators 1 (OT)

The first playoff matchup in the Battle of Ontario seems almost quaint now. There was none of the bad blood or controversy that came to define the rivalry, and even diehard fans of both teams probably don't remember all that much about the six-game series.

But if there's an exception, it came in game five. The home team had held serve through the series, but the Senators were on the verge of stealing one, holding a 1–0 advantage in the dying minutes of what had been, in all honestly, a dreadfully dull game. That's when Steve Thomas scored late to tie it up, and the two teams proceeded to play a frantic overtime that went back-and-forth until Thomas ended it.

The Leafs finished things off in Ottawa in game six, with the last goal of Wendel Clark's career serving as the winner.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Weekend wrap: The inevitable crash-and-burn of the Toronto Maple Leafs

A look at three of the biggest stories from the NHL weekend and how they’ll play into the coming days.

The Stats Guys Are Happy, So the Leafs Must be Losing

Early in the season, we presented the 2013-14 Toronto Maple Leafs as the canary in the advanced-stats mine shaft — the ultimate test case of everything that hockey’s wave of new metrics and data-based analytics thought it knew about what drives success. We've learned the numbers point to the critical importance of possession. Teams that control the puck — and use that control to direct a lot of shots at the net — usually win. Teams that can’t do it usually lose.

But occasionally we see a short-term outlier, and last year’s Toronto team was one. The stats guys said they couldn’t keep winning that way. The Maple Leafs insisted that they could. And over the season’s first few weeks, it looked like Toronto was going to pull it off once again. Leafs fans rejoiced. Old-school media gloated. Celebratory T-shirts were, literally, printed up.

Those days suddenly feel like a very long time ago. The Toronto Maple Leafs are in a free fall.

Last Monday, the Leafs were humiliated by the Blue Jackets on their home ice, dropping a 6-0 decision. On Wednesday in Pittsburgh, they suffered the embarrassment of failing to get so much as a single shot after the second intermission. On Friday, they faced the dead-last Sabres in a battle of the two worst possession teams of the advanced stats era and lost again.

Saturday night brought yet another defeat, this time to the Canadiens. Montreal jumped out to a 4-0 second-period lead before a pair of Leafs goals made the final respectable, but this one was never really in doubt.

Leafs fans won’t want to hear it, but the math is actually pretty simple: If they can’t fix their shot clock issues, the Leafs will need historically good goaltending to win. They were getting that early on, and it helped them start the season 6-1-0. But in recent games, with James Reimer and Jonathan Bernier looking merely good instead of excellent, the Leafs seem overwhelmed. In their last 20, they’ve been under .500 at 8-9-3. They can’t score anymore. The defensive system is a mess. The coach sounds like he’s out of answers. And the season is slipping away from them.

Or maybe not. This could just be a cold streak, after all, the kind that every team hits at least once or twice over a long season. It’s worth remembering that while the Leafs have dropped from the top of the Atlantic down to wild-card status, they’re still four points up on the ninth spot. Plenty of teams would love to trade places with them.

So that’s the good news. The bad news is that the December schedule is absolutely brutal, including several games with the top Western Conference teams that the Leafs have mostly avoided so far. If they’re going to turn their season around, they’ll need to do it against the league’s best.

Oh, and this is the month that the HBO cameras show up. No pressure, guys.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Going under cover

Sports Illustrated recently launched an online feature called the Archive, which allows you to search for any player or team and browse through all of SI's articles, photos and videos. It's addictive stuff. And you can learn a lot.

For example: Did you know that the Toronto Maple Leafs have never been on the cover of Sports Illustrated?

According to their archive, no Leaf has ever made the cover -- not even in the background of another hockey photo. That seems odd, although you have to consider that SI's hockey coverage peaked in the 70s and 80s, and the Leafs weren't exactly... um... newsworthy back then. Still, the Leafs have apparently shown up in over 550 SI articles over the years, so it's a little strange that they never even managed a cameo on the cover.

All of which begs the question: if there's an SI cover curse, how bad would the Leafs be if they had ever been on one? Not to worry. Considering the current state of the team, and the current almost complete lack of hockey coverage in Sports Illustrated, I wouldn't expect any cover appearances any time soon.

What about the other Canadian teams?

Montreal Canadiens - Thirteen covers. The team made frequent appearances in the 60s and 70s, but since then have only been on twice -- once each for their Cup wins in 1986 and 1993.

Edmonton Oilers - Ten covers. For some reason this surprised me -- I would have expected more, since SI had a lot of hockey coverage in the 80s. Needless to say, all but one of the covers feature Gretzky and the appearances end in 1989. Another surprise: Gretzky made only one cover appearance as a King, and two more as a Ranger.

Ottawa Senators - No covers.

Vancouver Canucks - Two covers, but in both cases a Canuck is only shown in the background of a cover that focuses on the New York Rangers.

Calgary Flames - Two covers. One featuring Jarome Iginla's face along with a few dozen others on a "Minorities in Sports" feature, and another with an unindentified Flames being run over by Tomas Sandstrong of the Kings. Oddly enough, there is a cover featuring Jim Craig of the Atlanta Flames.

Neither the Jets or Nordiques ever made an appearance.

For whatever it's worth, the Toronto Blue Jays have made the cover eight times, including three weeks in a two in 1992 and this sweet shot of Shaker Mo rounding third at the Ex.

(Note: The SI Archive doesn't seem to be 100% reliable, and they're not completely consistent with how they tag each cover. For example, I found two old Wayne Gretzky covers that showed up under his name but not in a search for the Oilers. So please forgive any errors above.)

Great Obscure Moments in Leafs History - Nikolai Borschevsky's post-game interview with Ron MacLean

Great Obscure Moments in Leafs History - An ongoing series to honor the greatest, completely meaningless moments in Toronto Maple Leaf history.

So we all remember Nikolai Borschevsky's goal to beat the Wings in 1993. If you're like many Leaf fans, you probably spent the next fifteen minutes jumping up and down in your friend's basement, high-fiving strangers in a bar, or tipping over cars on Yonge Street. And if so, you missed out on one of the great moments in sports broadcasting history.

Today's great obscure moment in Leafs history is ...

Nikolai Borschevsky's post-game interview with Ron MacLean after game seven of the Detroit series

In theory, this should have been a great interview. The injured rookie scores the game seven overtime winner to complete the stunning upset and knock off the original six rival, and now you've got him for an exclusive interview on live television. What could possibly go wrong?

Um... did anyone check to see if he knows how to speak english? Oops, too late!

(Actually, that's not completely accurate. Borschevsky knew one english word: "unbelievable". Or, more specifically, "un-bee-leeb-abba". More on that in a minute.)

MacLean seems to sense he's in trouble right away as he asks for an apparently non-existent translator before deciding to solider ahead. After MacLean spends several moments trying to explain the concept of "feelings" (helpfully clutching at his heart at one point), Borschevsky finally understands the question and begins a rambling answer that's completely incomprehensible, causing MacLean to start making subtle "get me out of here" faces at the camera. Borschevsky, frantically gesturing with one hand, finally punctuates his mumbling soliloquy with the classic "unbeeleebabba" line

MacLean takes that opportunity to cut the interview short, but not before inexplicably ending things by gently poking Borschevsky in the tummy.

This was quite possibly the greatest few minutes of comedy the CBC has ever aired.

I'm saying it now: Nikolai Borschevsky needs to be given his own talk show where he brings out guests, just stares at them as they talk, then finally shakes his head and says "unbeeleebabba" before throwing to commercial. I would watch this show every night. Make this happen, CBC!

The full interview is here, beginning at 3:25 (although you're going to watch the whole clip).