SIMMONS: Is this finally the year a Canadian team wins the Stanley Cup?
'Nobody dreams of winning the President’s Trophy. They dream of winning the Stanley Cup. That’s the goal. That's always the goal.'
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Will this be the year that ‘Woe Canada’ turns to ‘Oh Canada!’ in the Stanley Cup playoffs?
The Winnipeg Jets and Toronto Maple Leafs sure hope so — although hope isn’t worth a damn this time of year.
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SIMMONS: Is this finally the year a Canadian team wins the Stanley Cup? Back to video
Collectively, these two regular-season giants, the Jets — with the best record in the National Hockey League — and the Leafs — finishing first in the deepest division in hockey — have a long and disappointing history of playoff failures.
Failures that need to be overcome in the Stanley Cup weeks ahead.
“Nobody dreams of winning the President’s Trophy,” said GM Kevin Chevaldayoff, whose Jets finished first overall in the regular season, dominating from start to finish of the 82-game season. “They dream of winning the Stanley Cup. That’s the goal. That’s always the goal.
“We understand that. We understand what’s happened in the past. Now it’s about all the scar tissue we’ve built up over the years and what do we do with it? And how do we respond?”
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This is Brad Treliving’s second playoff season as GM of the Maple Leafs. He hasn’t been here for all the playoff troubles of the past, just one Game 7 loss in overtime last spring. He has been told the stories of troubles gone by, the seven playoff years where the Maple Leafs have been eliminated in just eight total rounds.
This is Year 9 for Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and Morgan Rielly. They have experienced all the pain and blame that comes with a lack of post-season understanding. They know that everything they will do will be measured over the coming days.
“We’re not focused on what’s happened in the past,” Treliving said. “We’re not reliving that. We’re focused on today and what’s ahead of us.
“We’ve got a good team. And we know we’re playing a really good team (the Ottawa Senators). And I know this sounds cliche and motherhoodish, but we’re worried about we can accomplish each day and how we can max out each day and if we do that, the way we can, we’ll take it from there.”
“I’ve got great faith in this team. We have new people (like coach Craig Berube, defenceman Chris Tanev and starting goaltender Anthony Stolarz) who haven’t been through any of this here. I’ve got great faith in our (star) players, not just in their ability but to see how much they care and how they are around their teammates. I see how they’ve bought in to the coach this season.
“Every experience you go through shapes who you are, but we can’t be looking back at the past. That isn’t the way to go about this.”
As bad as the Leafs playoff history may be in this era, the Jets history is almost worse. They lost in five games to Colorado last year and in five games to Vegas two years ago. They didn’t make the playoffs in 2022 and, the year before, were swept by Montreal in the COVID-19 season. The year before that, they were swept in Round 1 by the Calgary Flames.
In total, the Jets have won six playoff games in the past five years.
The Leafs have been let down most playoff seasons by their Big Four up front — captain Matthews, 100-point winger Marner, breakout star Nylander and the ever-consistent John Tavares. You don’t win a Cup — or even a few rounds — without large performances from your best players.
Connor McDavid had an astounding 42 playoff points with Edmonton last year and almost carried the Oilers to the Stanley Cup. They came up one game and one goal short. But he was spectacular, as was teammate Leon Draisaitl, in the playoffs.
The year before that, Jack Eichel had a 26-point post-season on the way to Vegas winning the Cup. In the two seasons in which Tampa Bay won, Nikita Kucherov had 66 total points. When Pittsburgh won back-to-back crowns, Sidney Crosby combined for 46 points.
In eight playoff seasons, Matthews has averaged six points a year, Marner has averaged just over six points, Nylander and Tavares have scored at a lesser clip in their playoff careers.
In their playoff lives, Mark Scheifele of Winnipeg has scored just over five points a playoff season, the same annual total as Kyle Connor and the big drop goes to Nik Ehlers, with just 14 total playoff points in six years.
“I always take the long vision on this,” Chevaldayoff said. “You start the season with 32 teams and, by this weekend, 16 of them, half of the teams in the league, will be eliminated. Then two weeks from now, eight more teams will be eliminated. It happens fast. You’re in then you’re out.
“The beauty is you don’t know. That’s why live sports are what they are and why they’re so great. There is no guarantee of anything. You have to earn your way in.
“You can put it on paper. You can put it on the wall. You can look at your statistics. It still has to be done on the ice. This is a time when players separate themselves.”
Without being asked about the recent final round of the The Masters’ golf tournament, both Treliving and Chevaldayoff referenced all that can be learned from the emotional and dramatic win by Rory McIlroy on Sunday.
“We’ve talked about it already,” Treliving said. “We all watched it and experienced it. That took, what 11 or 12 years to get to where Rory wanted to go, to get the big goal? He had a lot of heartache along the way. Even the final round itself was full of emotional twists and turns.
“We can take something from that. Some of the greatest goals in life take time to accomplish.”
“Look at what happened on Sunday,” Chevaldayoff said. “Golf is nothing like hockey, but the personal experience can be. You walk through that final round with (Rory) and how many times did he almost lose it and win it and lose it before he finally won it.”
It was his own best-of-seven in one round of golf.
The Jets open the Stanley Cup playoffs against the scorching St. Louis Blues, who finished their season with a desperate playoff run of 19-4-2 in their final 25 games.
The Leafs open the playoffs with an apparently crazed Battle of Ontario and against the amped-up Senators, in the playoffs for the first time in eight years. The Sens pushed into the first wild-card spot in the East, going 14-5-2 down the stretch.
“These are great matchups,” Treliving said. “There are great teams playing great teams.”
Last year, it was all about the Oilers and whether they would end the Canadian drought for the Stanley Cup which dates back to 1993. This is 32 years now. This is too long. The Oilers came up one game short in losing to the Florida Panthers.
This year, the Oilers haven’t looked anything like a Stanley Cup champion. They travel on the road to Los Angeles for Round 1 of the playoffs. The winner of that likely will play Vegas in Round 2.
McDavid has been McDavid-like lately. He has nine points in the past three Oilers games. He looks playoff-ready and amped even if the rest of his team does not. This group of Oilers has played for the Cup and lost a conference final, which the Leafs have never been close to and the Jets got to a conference final just once, losing in five games seven years ago.
Could this be another Oilers playoff run?
The Canadian focus will be more intense in Winnipeg and Toronto, even with Ottawa in, Montreal likely to be in and the Oilers with the best offensive players in the game.
“I’ve lived through the Battle of Alberta,” said Treliving, the former GM of the Calgary Flames. “Those are special series. We all go back to growing up and depending on your age whether you watched the Battle of Ontario or the Battle of Alberta, it forms great memories for you.
“I was thinking of this the other night. Made me think of Pat Quinn and so many great people involved with those Leafs teams. Hopefully we can be part of great memories for a new generation with a great new rivalry.”
And is it possible, crazy as it sounds, for a Toronto-Winnipeg Stanley Cup final or a Toronto-Edmonton final, if you want to dream just a little or suspend your longtime beliefs?
“I think Canada would like that very much,” said Chevaldayoff, talking about a Winnipeg-Toronto final.
“Right now in this country,” talking about the Battle of Ontario, not the Stanley Cup final, Treliving said: “I think we all need something like this.”
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