The Leafs should lose tonight, for the good of hockey

Everyone wants their team to win, but at what cost? What is more important is that the whole sport prevails and we get to enjoy it for many more years.

The Carolina Hurricanes are doing everything right. Putting entertainment first, they play extremely fun hockey while also giving all their fans what they want. There is simply no doubt that they are what hockey should be in the 21st century, first and foremost.

This team oozes with the hunger to give the fans what they want, a desire from the top of the franchise to their fourth-line grinder, entertainment is prevalent.

While more franchises are run into the ground, despite having some of the best talents in the sport, the Hurricanes are here with the most underrated talent in the league and providing that good content.

Even before wonderkid Andrei Svechnikov showed up as a rookie this year, this team was going to be exciting. But when it comes to goals like this, the kid is seriously a must-watch forward.

That’s just one player of their 23-man roster as well — providing one piece of this team’s gigantic web of storylines that makes the whole league so much more interesting. All you have to do is pay attention.

There’s even a specific Leafs connection to this team. Leafs castoff and the return of the Zach Hyman trade, Greg McKegg has now become a full-time NHL player for the first time in his career. These kinds of stories, the comeback or rise from what seemed to be like a dead career, pulls at the heartstrings of every hockey fan no matter what colours they are wearing.

For the whole hockey world to come together and support this team and their rise from being a laughing stock, it’s increasingly important. The best story in hockey this year has reached beyond the borders put up by mega fans of other sports, getting major American news outlets to talk about them and the greatest celebratory invention — the Storm Surge.

Discussing the 2018-19 Carolina Hurricanes without mentioning the Storm Surge would be like talking about One Direction without mentioning “What Makes You Beautiful”.

Their magnum opus drew some hate from mainly old, mainly washed up hockey minds, but got fans to stay after home games no matter what and crowned them the top of the entertainment game.

To have that content and joy in the playoffs is something that every single sports fan should be behind. Although they have recently announced that the Storm Surge will be discontinued, their entertainment value on the ice is, as evident with Svechnikov and other talented forwards like Sebastian Aho, is impeccable.

No matter what, it is so important that the Hurricanes can show their product on the biggest stage of professional hockey.

Before they play the Leafs, they sit in the second wild card spot and just one point above the Canadiens with three games left. If they were to win tonight and the Habs lose, it would almost secure that playoff spot for the club.

Wouldn’t we want the Habs to try to make it and just have it snatched out of their scummy hands by the glory of the Storm Surge? Shea Weber would be drying his tears during locker cleanout, mainly because he knows he has so many years left in that damned city.

Justin Williams would be dancing on top of Max Domi’s grave.

Let’s get together and hope for the Leafs to lose. Just think back to the tank years for this one game.

Go Cane’s.