Monday, April 09, 2007

I should have known right from the start...

Allow me to draw an analogy. You're dating a jerk. If you find yourself in this rather unfortunate situation, you are in no position to have high expectations. Your birthday, is it? Take-out Chinese and beer is about as much as you can hope for. Your anniversary? He's probably not even certain you two are in an exclusive relationship. Are you hurt when he dumps you? Of course (you keep hoping he'll change). Are you surprised. Not really.

So, depending on who you ask, the Leafs were either all right* or totally mediocre. I vote for the latter. A team almost entirely comprised of 3rd liners, that requires goals from their defencemen because their offense is notoriously unreliable, and has an average goaltending (which, in Toronto, is simply not enough). What could you realistically expect from this team? 9th place was probably it. Were they capable of more? I believe so, but they never seemed to quite come together cohesively to make up for each others' shortcomings or claw back from goal deficits. They were inconsistent from pretty much the beginning. There were occasional flashes of brilliance. Not enough, clearly, for a playoff spot. But darn it, we were so close.

On the bright side, I recall a major issue last season being how rarely we shot the puck. Now that we've addressed that this year, perhaps we can work on accuracy next. You know...the whole idea of putting the puck where the opposing goalie isn't?

Yeah, I'm still a little bitter. Anyone want to rent a fan for the post-season? I'm here if you need me.

I'm done monopolizing the hlog now.

*In case you're curious, either Bowen or Neale had described our first line of Ponikarovsky-Sundin-Antropov as one that is comparable to any other first line in the league. Yeah right.

9 comments:

Ellie said...

want to support the pens seeing as how you guys always come down in droves to mellon arena anyways...

Jordi said...

BUT YOU DON'T GIVE UP ON MEDIOCRE TEAMS! Okay K, I know you're a Leafs fan and I usually hate all Leafs living or dead, but we can get through this togethere! We dared to dream!

k.le said...

ellie: sold! you've got yourself a pens fan up until (if?) a canadian team makes the finals. this despite the fact that i strongly dislike crosby.

jordi: i love the leafs and i am completely planning on sticking by them...i speculate that my love may be somewhat conditional, however, if they make missing the post-season a habit...but we'll just put that one aside for now...

so is there a 12-step plan to recovery or anything? does the first step involve junk food?

Miss. Scarlett said...

I'd invite you to cheer for the sens but I get the feeling that would be a waste of paper and ink :P

k.le said...

sherry, i can't believe you weren't rooting harder for us to make it. if, by some fortuitous twist of fate the leafs were in 4th and the sens were struggling for 8th, i'd be cheering for you guys like there was no tomorrow...the post-season isn't the same without a leafs-sens matchup...and based on their performance against toronto, perhaps they could finally silence the critics, eh?

and as i've stated in a previous blog post (and above in the comments...haha), if your sens make the cup finals, i'll convert for that series...
but i'm not really too concerned about that ;)

Jordi said...

You see, if we got the hlog meeting in Toronto after the playoffs we could've stayed up all night eating candy and junk while watching cheesy movies where we exclaim "She was so perfect for him and he never knew...".

bLiNdLuCk said...

Good wrapup of the Leaf's season, I totally agree with you.

The Penguins are a good choice to switch allegiance to and if you don't like Crosby try Jordan Staal on for size.

btw, I predict the Sens to beat the Penguins in 7 games and then lose to the Devils in 6. While Buffalo smokes the Dubie in 5 and flushes the Rangers in 5.

Sabres go on to take out the Devils in 6 and defeat Nashville (or San Jose) in 6 for their first Stanley Cup.

Paige said...

No, I'm sure you must like the Sabres more...

Still, I think Leafs AND Sabres fans been extinct for a while now.

k.le said...

blindluck: i generally consider myself to be the most ill-informed hlogger of the lot, so i'm really yay! that someone concurs with me...
i don't really like anyone from the staal family either so i'm focusing on evgeni...

paige: ellie asked first