I had the Tampa Bay Lightning winning their third straight Stanley Cup title. However, the Colorado Avalanche had other plans. Led by their captain Gabriel Landerskog, superstar forward Nathan McKinnon, and their young defenseman Cale Makar, the Avs upended a highly-talented Lightning squad to win their first Stanley Cup championship in over 20 years.
One of players on Colorado to experience his first taste of the cup championship was former Maple Leaf first round pick Nazem Kadri. Kadri was able to take his gritty play to Denver and contributed 29 goals and 87 points in the 2021-2022 season. In the playoffs, he scored 7 more times and collected 15 points. I’m sure those who follow the Leafs were waiting for Kadri to take a dumb penalty and cost the Avs a shot at the Cup. I bet many were quite surprised, I wasn’t. Kadri’s play hasn’t changed, just the colour and logo in front of the uniform.
Kadri is not the first ex-Leaf to enjoy success once he left Toronto. You don’t need to look that far back when Tyler Bozak and the St Louis Blues downed the Boston Bruins in the Cup final in 2019. In 1997, Larry Murphy was run out of Toronto and was basically given away to Detroit and the Red Wings were able to land a quality defenseman and went on to win the Stanley Cup.
It never ceases to amaze me. Those who call themselves Leafs fans do nothing more than call on management to deal good players to another team the moment they sense they reached their limit. More often than not, it shows they give on people too quickly and when the player ends up flourishing in another organization, they scratch and wonder how did that happen.
It’s not just the fans, the media led by the Star and the Sun seem to have taken an oath to run good players out of Toronto in favour ones who don’t the same level of passion and enthusiasm. The last four seasons, since Kyle Dubas took over as general manager, the media has gotten the team they asked for: lots of speed and skill, but very little in terms of physical play or defending your own end.
Now that Kadri is now a champion, who is the next Maple Leafs players to get shown the door and end up on a Stanley Cup winning team? Marner? Rielly? Tavares? It seems no one on the roster is untouchable. Hell, put a picture on the Leafs roster on the wall, throw a dart at it, and see where it lands. But whatever the case may be, we have always had the players to bring the Cup to Toronto. But it seems we would rather they do it elsewhere than in the Six.
#onSports 