The Maple Leaf flags on the cars will come down, but what a series....

Let’s be honest:  the Leafs, in many ways, deserved to win this series.  I'n guessing even some of the Boston faithful would concede that, upon reflection.  And I think Leaf fans should feel tremendously proud of what this young team did.  I’ve been watching hockey for  a long time (five plus decades) closely and I did not see this comeback coming by the Bruins in Game 7.  It's not that I thought the Leafs were home and cooled out.  I did not see Boston, on the heels of their effort in the last three games, scoring three goals to tie it up and send it into overtime.

For me, there is no “blame”.  Phaneuf played his guts out.  So did Reimer.  Heck, so did Kessel, Lupul, Franson, the injured Fraser, Kadri, Koamrov, Kulemin, all the Leafs, really.

And for all his critics, I believe that while players win and lose games, Carlyle coached his guts out to.  He made every adjustment, pulled every string, to get this group in a position to win.  In the end, they were within two minutes (seconds, really) of one of the more stunning upsets in recent hockey memory.

**

One of the interesting aspects of trying to provide a bit of analysis after the final whistle is looking back and determining if any of the pre-series and early-series commentary (in this case, thoughts that I put forward here) rang true—or missed the mark badly—as the series wore on.

From the Leaf side of things, I wondered if Kessel and Gardiner, for example, would be solid playoff performers.  (Interestingly, I was not unduly concerned about Reimer, because I have a kind of blind faith in the guy…)  Did Kessel have what it took to handle the full-scale attention any team (and maybe especially the Bruins) would throw his way?  Could Gardiner handle the physical demands of playoff hockey?  For the record, I thought the Bruins would push that notion further, but they didn’t challenge him—or Kadri, for that matter—the way I thought they could and would.  In fact, the smallish Kadri was more the hunter than the hunted a lot of the time in this match-up.

But a lot of my “themes” were not related simply to the to the Leafs.  I knew they would obviously be a huge part of the equation here, of course, and I felt a lot of the series would come down to “will”, as I have written about here before. Who would want it more?

Having asked that question, I can’t honestly say, looking back, that the Bruins truly wanted it more.  Heck, they somehow scored in the dying seconds, but I’m not sure it was about wanting it more.  It was maybe a young Leaf team not quite able to close the deal as much as it was about the Bruins being more determined.  Again, if we’re truthful, the Bruins did not play a good game Monday night.  But they managed, somehow, to win.

**

Before the series began, I opined, that the Bruins would a very beatable team in the playoffs.  (I’ve said for years, and especially this season, that the East was not a strong Conference, and the Leafs could earn a playoff berth in part because of the flawed rosters around them.)  I wasn’t sure that Toronto could be the squad to beat Boston, but having watched the Bruins over the years, you knew they were not what they were a few seasons ago.  (For the record, while their one Cup season was obviously impressive and cannot just be shuffled aside as though it didn’t happen, some historical perspective may help.  Tim Thomas was a huge factor, of course, as goalies almost always are.  And the Bruins were full measure for their championship, no question.  But except for that one remarkable spring, the Bruins have gone through some massive letdowns every year in the playoffs, including this spring—giving up some shockingly big leads more than once along the way in a number of different series.  That they escaped this particular jam allows them to live another day, but only convinces me all the more their days as an elite squad are all but numbered.  Yes, they were playing with a lot of injured guys, but they were missing something nonetheless.

This was also a Bruin team that, this year alone, was wildly inconsistent, and gave up some big leads in a number of regular-season games.

In more specific terms, I felt Chara was (still is) past his prime.  He remains a huge presence, and a big-time player, but you could see early in the series that the Leafs could work him, make him move his feet more than he wanted, put him in difficult spots.  He’s still awfully good, but not the player he was.  It’s a testament to him that he played as many minutes as he did in this series, and in Game 7, and played as well as he did.

Same with Lucic (though a much younger player), who has had his moments against Toronto but overall was mostly not a major factor until the final moments of Game 7.  For the most part, he was not the player we would have expected him to be, say, two years ago, if the Leafs were playing that Bruin squad.  My suggestion regarding Lucic before the series, and early on in the series, was easy to make from the comfort of my couch but it was essentially this:  don’t antagonize him, don’t wake him up, in case we see the Lucic of old.

I also spoke of Seguin before the series got underway, and wondered aloud if this would be his coming-out party, or if he would begin to show himself as simply (like a lot of current young NHL’ers) a nice player, but not the impact guy you dream of when you draft a player second overall.  Early in the series I thought Seguin was one of Boston’s best players, a real threat, but as the series wore on his production was not in evidence.  Was that a case of his not playing well, tough luck, or the Leafs doing a job on he and Bergeron (and Marchand)?

That said, in the end, Seguin kept fighting to create chances, and his good shift helped create momentum that ended up in Marchand (often invisible in the series) netting the winner, with help from Bergeron.

Speaking of Bergeron, I thought the Leafs might have a hard time matching up against him, because he is such a smart, versatile center.  But they limited his production, along with his linemates, and that was a big part of the series going to 7 games. However, he was there at the end, making a difference.

I also thought the Leafs would do well to get into Rask’s head a bit, upset him, agitate him around his crease, given his history of blow-ups.  But to his immense credit, Rask played some fine hockey in this series.

Bottom line:  as good as the Bruins have been for years now, and as much as they have been, in a sense, a measuring stick for the blue and white, we were “this close” to knocking them out. We are now at least on a par and I dare say, a better team.

At the end of the day, the Leafs deserved every win in this series. In fact, they may have been full measure for five wins.  In the end, now that it’s over, we can look back and say a few things: over the course of a full series, they were faster, tougher, smarter, grittier and more disciplined than the Bruins. But we didn’t win.

In two of the games the Leafs were felled more by breakdowns than overall awful play.  But when there was doubt, or moments when error crept back into their game, Reimer was there in Games 2, 5, 6 and 7 to save the day. Yet the Bruins live to play another day.  The Leafs will reflect and wonder about what might have been.  How long might they have gone in these playoffs?

**

I wrote the other day about the spring of ’59, when a young Leaf team upset the Bruins—who had been in the finals twice in the previous three years and were expected to be finalists again that spring.  Interestingly (and I’m not saying history will repeat itself), the core of that squad because the guts of the group that went on to win four Cups in the ‘60s.  Kids like like Mahovlich (right), Duff (for two of the championships), Baun  and youngish veterans like Armstrong, Horton, Stanley, Pulford and Bower were there in ’59 and became Leaf stalwarts in the glorious championship seasons.

That was a different time, a different era in hockey.  While the Leafs came achingly close Monday night, they could not quite slay the dragon, just as the emerging Leafs could not beat the powerful Habs in 1959 and 1960.

I won’t make bold forecasts moments after a tough Game 7 loss.  But the Leafs are a team for the present—and future.  The Bruins, to me, look like yesterday’s team.  I don’t see them beating the Rangers, but who knows?

As for the Leafs, I sense they will now reside in a different level of consciousness in the minds of Leaf supporters around the world.

I wrote recently about things I was “right” about when it can to the Leafs this season.  There were also things I was plenty wrong about.  But as I look back on a short season, a flat end to that schedule and a pretty impressive comeback against the once powerful Bruins and almost an upset series win, a couple of thoughts come to mind:  I believed in Reimer (as I’ve indicated here since last summer and before) and I believed in Carlyle.  And I believe all the more in both men now.

Reimer is the guy in goal.  I wrote this weeks ago, and he needs to be the guy going forward.

While many Leaf fans saw only Carlyle’s stubbornness and his supposed dislike of certain players (and apparently "advanced stats"), my suggestion is he has helped to make them, for the most part, better players—and for sure, a better team—when it really mattered.  And that’s in the playoffs.

It’s a bit early to “look ahead”.  We all need a bit of time.  But now we know what the Leafs are capable of.  They can’t fool us any more.  The bar, fair or not (as I said here once they made the playoffs officially), will now be much higher.

But because of that, and their play over the past two weeks, they have created another generation of Maple Leaf fans.  The Smythe legacy lives- again.

I’ll leave the final comments today to you.