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Would You Rather be a Philadelphia Flyers Fan, or a Toronto Maple Leafs Fan?
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It’s mid-May, which means the annual Toronto Maple Leafs playoff flameout is currently upon us. The only thing more certain than death and taxes is Auston Matthews appearing on the side of a milk carton as his team chokes away a golden opportunity to reach the conference finals for the first time since 2002.
This season, the Leafs won the Atlantic with 108 points, a record of 52 wins, 26 losses, and four OTL. They beat the Senators 4-2 in the first round and went up 2-0 on the Panthers in the second round, winning the first two games at home by scores of 5-4 and 4-3. They went to Florida for game three, took a 3-1 lead in the second period, then blew it and lost in overtime before being smacked 2-0 and 6-1 in games four and five. Now they need to win game six to send the series back to Ontario for a game seven.
They’ve been outscored 12-2 since going up 3 to 1 in game three.
Which brings us to the Philadelphia tie-in, and a rhetorical question –
Would you rather be a Leafs fan or a Flyers fan?
On one hand, neither team has lifted the Stanley Cup in a half Century. Toronto’s last title was 1967 and the Flyers won it in 1975. On the other hand, Toronto has been to the playoffs nine years in a row and in the regular season finished with 90+ points in seven of the last 10 seasons. So you get the regular season enjoyment before the deflating playoff exit. At least if you’re a Flyers fan you used to get a break every other season after the playoff flame out. You didn’t get your hopes up TOO much since you didn’t think they were going to lift the Cup anyway, outside of that miracle run in 2010 when they finally stumbled against the better team.
Thing is, Toronto is probably starting Chuck Fletcher’s “aggressive retool” or maybe a larger teardown if they lose in game six. Mitch Marner and John Tavares are free agents. The defensemen are locked up through 2028 along with Matthews and William Nylander. Stolie the Goalie has one year at $2.5 million remaining. At least the Flyers finally admitted to everyone that they’re rebuilding and there’s no delusion of grandeur taking place here. The Flyers know what they are and have finally accepted it. The Leafs haven’t gotten that far yet, but it looks like they’re on the path.
So you bite down hard and think about the current situation for each team. Big market clubs with loyal fans who haven’t seen a championship since the Jimmy Carter administration (edit – actually I’m wrong, Gerald Ford was still in office) Unless you think the Leafs pull off some miracle comeback here and then have enough to take out the Canes in the ECF, putting your fandom eggs in the Flyer basket might be the less painful move, and that’s saying something.
Choosing between being a Leafs fan or a Flyers fan is like choosing between the Schuylkill Expressway and southbound Blue Route. In both cases you find yourself on an excruciating slow crawl to nothingness.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com