What you missed during the Jays’ playoff run
7 years ago
I was too young to remember 1992 and 1993, so these past two Jays seasons are the closest thing I have to postseason attachment. I feel like that’s the same for a lot of readers, so I imagine the sting of them coming close without getting past the ALCS hump in back-to-back years is universal around here.
With the baseball season done, though, I bet there’s a few of you that got distracted by the hysteria, euphoria, and the eventual emotional crash of this postseason and lost just a bit of track in regards to what was happening on the ol’ Ice Rink down the street. So, here’s a quick refresher.
- The Leafs kind of limped their way across the finish line during the preseason. I’m not even going to bother linking you to anything here: I think even people who weren’t distracted by the Jays ignored those final few days of training camp hockey.
- The team decided to go young rather than give benefit of the doubt to every veteran, sending players like Brooks Laich and Colin Greening to the Marlies.
- Seth Griffith of the Boston Bruins was claimed off of waivers. Seth is very good and still reasonably young, but he hasn’t played yet.
- Auston Matthews became the first player in NHL history to score four goals in his first game. It was brilliant, the second goal made us all cry, and in classic Leafs fashion, they still lost. The league still went nuts for it, though.
- The Marlies won their home opener, and then won again. The Furies, who we are also covering this year on TLN, won their home opener, and then won again.
- The Leafs won their home opener too. Mitch Marner scored his first NHL goal while his mom was in the bathroom. The grandeur and the circumstances made the game instantaneously feel like one of the most important in Leafs history.
- Auston Matthews, Jeremy Bracco, and Kasperi Kapanen won shiny new trophies for being awesome.
- If you’re not about to spend the rest of your night being sad on or offline, the Leafs are about half an hour away from taking on the Winnipeg Jets in a showdown of the top two picks of the 2016 Draft.
That just about covers it. Hopefully, when we do this post next year, we’ll be talking about the Jays winning the World Series and the Leafs starting their season 10-0-0. Hey, shut up, it happened once! It was 23 years ago and I was about to turn two.
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