The Toronto Maple Leafs have won a playoff series for the first time in this blog's history.

Ludicrous statement. This blog was born in May, 2004. The Leafs had beaten the Ottawa Senators the previous month. Nine years in the playoff wilderness followed, and in 2013 the team very unexpectedly made it in to the post-season and even more unexpectedly extended the Boston Bruins to seven games. In that seventh game, the Leafs had a 4-1 lead with ten minutes to go....and colossally imploded and lost, cueing chants of "IT WAS 4-1" for years. That team was a mirage, and a couple of subsequent seasons  of  horrid play down the stretch sealed its fate. The squad was largely dismantled and rebuilt around a new core, a core that dripped promise: Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, Morgan Reilly, and eventually John Tavares. They began to excel in the regular season, but any NHL fan will tell you that's mere prologue, and the playoffs are a different beast entirely. The checking gets much tighter, the time and space to make plays goes away, and -- not to make excuses -- but the Atlantic Division around the Leafs became an absolute powerhouse. Last year, every single Eastern Conference playoff team finished the regular season with 100 pts or better. That's never happened before. 

Surrounded by so many other strong franchises, they haven't been able to get it done. At times, before last year at least, it's looked almost as if the Leafs had no interest in getting it done, and that as a fan is demoralizing and infuriating. (I've taken flak from loved ones for this sentiment, and of course I know they don't stop trying, but it's hard to take any other impression from epic collapse after epic collapse after ELEVEN shots for the entirety of an elimination game.)

Last year they battled Tampa -- winner of the two previous Cups and widely considered the class of the league -- for seven games. In game seven, one of Tampa's depth players, Nick Paul, scored two goals and the Lightning won 2-1. 

The mockery...okay, I will grant it's been earned. At the same time, it has very much felt for the last six years that the Leafs are the only team in the history of hockey to have trouble advancing in the playoffs. That's emphatically untrue. Hell, one of our nemeses, the Bruins, have a record from 1995-2011 that makes the Leafs' futility look tame. Washington butted heads with Pittsburgh for years before finally breaking through. San Jose had a reputation as perennial regular season juggernauts and playoff season japers. 

Most annoying to me as a fan were the many, and I do mean MANY, people who cheerfully predicted another first round exit. Actually, "predicted" is weak. These people were ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN the Leafs would flunk again. Because past equals future, I guess?  I mean, each roster, each opponent's roster, each series, is a brand new thing.  Over and over, though, people would reject that and insist the Leafs suck, they have always sucked, they shall suck forever. Suck suck sucky suck. 

It shouldn't bother me. It's a goddamn sports team, it means nothing to the universe. Shameful admission: I took it all very personally. I was convinced everyone was saying all this to piss me off, and it worked. 

It sowed doubt in my head, and I was even more ashamed of that. Doubt tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. But after game one of this series, which Tampa won in a walk,  the demons danced.

Then the Leafs won the next three games, two of them in Tampa in overtime, and the process by which they won those games was very different from past series. They were -- let's be honest -- outplayed for much of the series. Leaf Michael Bunting concussed Tampa's Eric Cernak in Game 1 and was suspended for the next three matches. We never saw Cernak again, and if that hit doesn't happen, credibly Tampa takes the series. Even minus Cernak, it was a game of inches. The Lightning won game five (more demon disco)  and Tampa had ample opportunity to put game six away and force a VERY tense game seven. It didn't happen. The Leafs bent but didn't break.

On to round two. The Leafs' unofficial mascot, Steve "Dangle" Glynn, has posted Leaf Fan Reaction video after every game since 2009. (Eva calls him "uber-goober"; and she and I both think you should see why.

He says something amongst all the screaming that I echo with authority: maybe now Leaf fans will stop acting like Leaf fans. Imagining the  new and novel way the team will break your heart, and further convincing yourself they do it on purpose. "Winning playoff rounds is....NORMAL", says Steve, and he's right. Eight teams win in the first round every year. It's only a quarter of the way; the Stanley Cup is hands down the most difficult trophy to win in professional team sports. 

The Leafs face Boston or Florida next (they play their Game Seven this evening). Boston would be another demon to slay, and they look shockingly takeable after posting the best regular season in league history. I doubt anybody imagined Florida would take that series seven games. 

Which just goes to show you. If the Bruins are ruined tonight, they'll join a long line of teams that cleaned up in the regular season only to whimper and wilt in the 'yoffs. 

Before I get to the personal part of this blog, I need to give some shoutouts. To the team as a whole, because everybody contributed to this. We had no passengers this time. Even Alexander Kerfoot, who has been snakebitten all season, played good defence and potted one of the three OT road winners (no other squad has ever won three games in OT on the road in a series before). Our objectively worst player, Justin Holl, had a record that doesn't bear scrutiny. The Leafs outscored the Lightning 20-5 while Holl was OFF the ice, and were outscored by the Lightning 14-5 while he was ON the ice. That's bad. No, not every goal was directly attributable to a Holl fuckup, but...quite a few were. And yet even Holl blocked MORE than his far share of lethal Steven Stamkos one timers. (Holl was scratched last night for the first time in a long time and Stamkos rang one off the post; our goalie, Ilya Samsonov, was up to the rest of his bombs off the wing. It's a fair bet without Holl, Stamkos would have had at least a couple more goals, and knowing that player they would have been timely goals. 

Kudos to our deadline. additions this year. Ryan O'Reilly was a gamer. McCabe, playing in his first playoff series after 503 games, was a workhorse. Luke Schenn was Jake Muzzin redux. Noel Acciari outhit everyone else on both rosters and chipped in a great goal. Gustafsson drew in for the first time last night and looked good. 

To the core. They've been expected to carry this team and failed to do so and it's not as if they all disappeared: some of them were point a game or close in the playoffs. But this season they all turned it up a few notches. Marner is currently second in scoring league wide. Matthews and Tavares each willed wins. And Morgan Reilly absolutely blue past all prognostications and is currently tied for second in league scoring among defensemen, while actually (gasp!) making plays defensively!

To the coach, Sheldon Keefe, who has just saved his job. To the GM, Kyle Dubas, who may have done the same (and who is the only person I trust rejigging contracts this year anyway). Congratulations and thank you. 

A word on Matthew Knies. It's pronouced as if "size" started with an "n" and....very Knies. He was on the ice for all three OT winners. That a college phenom should play three meaningless cruise control regular season games, be scratched in game one, draw in only due to Bunting's suspension, and MORE THAN hold his own is nothing short of stunning. Every single time he was on the ice he did something surprisingly positive. Three assists in this series, two of them at the clutchiest of times. Defensive warts, but those are to be expected. I don't think anyone on either team expected a guy with no NHL experience to deke seasoned Tampa players out of their jocks on a fairly routine basis. This kid has a BRIGHT future. 

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It's what happened AFTER the game that has me reflecting, realizing there are yet more things in the world I do not understand.

First, the handshake line. I appreciate this tradition in hockey, even though it's usually perfunctory between one team that can't wait to get off the ice to pour champagne all over each other and one team that just wants to find a hole and lick its wounds. Last night's handshake line between the Leafs and Lightning was different. Hugs, including between two people who had been crosschecking and crunching each other mercilessly for seven gruelling games. Smiles all around, including on Tampa: they seemed genuinely happy and very respectful of a team they'd done a very credible job of pretending they hated.

Look, I just don't understand hatred as an emotion. I saw it where it didn't exist over the last seven games...or, and I doubt this very much, Tampa was collectively acting nice just to be polite. There was a strong mutual respect in that line, and that I get -- you can respect the hell out of an opponent while wanting to drive them into the ground -- but there was more than that. Almost...affection. I'm struggling to square that with the animosity that was ABUNDANT before Game Six. Last night -- only four penalties, none of them vicious. No fights, and yes lots of hits (the Leafs hit now) but nothing even remotely dirty. There'd been a LOT of dirt in games previous, starting with Bunting's unforgivable elbow on Cernak but including goonery from Lightning players such as Corey Perry and Pat Maroon. But last night that all went away and it seemed like the teams LIKED each other.

Logically, I think I understand this. I have never played competitive sports (duh, look at me) and so I'm unsure I will ever get it emotionally.

Even weirder, and this really has me scratching my head, at least 99.99% of the animosity towards the Leafs from the fanbases of 31 other teams also went away last night. The team was widely and effusively praised by the denizens of r/hockey, and that subreddit has NEVER had a kind word to say about any Toronto Maple Leaf. 

"Look, I wanted Tampa to win the next two games because the "curse" is funny as fuck," said one Blackhawks fan. "But this is Toronto's night. They've earned this. Be nice."

I did NOT expect this instant 180, not after years of constant abuse. What I expected was grumbles about how the Leafs didn't really deserve it -- a point that could certainly be debated -- coupled with ugly laughter at the Leafs celebrating the quarter pole as if they'd just won it all and "Now it'll be another 19 years before they get past the SECOND round". (One Bruin fan actually did say this, and then insisted he was joking and that if Boston could get past Florida tonight, they should be genuinely terrified of Toronto.)

It occurs to me that, not being a bully myself, I don't know the etiquette for kicking people when they're down. It was my experience for a great many years that my own efforts to get past the first round elimination -- it happened every September in the first week of class -- were greeted with sneering fury. If the perennial geek somehow gets a girlfriend -- or a first round win -- well, that's just more ammunition, isn't it. The girlfriend becomes part of the joke, a target herself. 

Apparently I have that wrong.

It was addictive to read the praise of fans from whom I never expected praise. It was like a pleasant shock, over and over and over, and I'm still processing this, wondering if and when I misread things, wondering if there's anything I could have done to garner even a smattering of regard.

_________

Kathy watched last night too, despite joking that she was a jinx, and I stepped in it chiding her for the joke I've heard a few too many times to think was wholly a joke. "Can you just not be so literal sometimes?" she pleaded, and I heard a depressed person being told to just cheer up and an anxious person being told to just calm down.

It was a joke. She doesn't believe in jinxes and certainly doesn't believe she is one. 

Self-deprecating humour: she and I both engage in it, but when I do it, I'm acknowledging I'm a total fuckup and giving you permission to laugh at me. Laughter is something I can deal with. When she does it, it's something else entirely. I still don't know exactly what, but I'm not poking THAT bear again. 

How do I learn the rules for when to take something seriously and when to ignore it?

How do I know when to be literal and when to look at dripping self-hatred and see a joke?

How do I ever view hatred of any kind as a joke?

How am I 51 years old and without the answers to these questions?

On to the second round. Go Leafs go. And don't give the haters any reason to start hating you again.