Toronto Raptors who are still playing Alumni thread ....

[The Great One]

This is crazy.

[KeonClark]

The Raptors remind me of Karl-Anthony Towns / Wiggins era of the Wolves ... Great stats during the regular season but compete level
so low that Butler roasted them during a famous intra squad practice ..

The Raptors? Or the Leafs? Either way, I don't think either had a "compete level" issue whatsoever...

I'm not even Leafs fan but I'll interject here. The blowback on them losing to Tampa is funny. They outplayed Tampa. The bounces and reffing didn't go their way, and they lost in 7. Tampa is the 2x defending stanley cup champion, going for 3, up 2 games to 0 on the leagues best team this year. Like, what are we even talking about here. The Leafs are a very good, young hockey team.

[guyroch]

Until the Leafs address the lack of sandpaper, I think it will be more of the same, maybe a round or two. Time to trade Nylander

The Raptors remind me of Karl-Anthony Towns / Wiggins era of the Wolves ... Great stats during the regular season but compete level
so low that Butler roasted them during a famous intra squad practice ..

[G__Deane]

Until the Leafs address the lack of sandpaper, I think it will be more of the same, maybe a round or two. Time to trade Nylander

[Primer]

It's all about relative timeline. The Leafs' best player is 24 years old. Them making the playoffs at all the past few years was the team functioning ahead of schedule. The NHL is also a league with incredible parity, meaning there's a lot of luck involved with advancing in the playoffs.

In terms of how the team actually performed, this year's playoff "run" was actually a huge leap forward for the Leafs. They just lost a good, hard fought series against the two times defending champs. Previous years they collapsed (last year in particular) against lesser teams. They had big issues from previous years that they fixed. This year's team if they stay the course should be very, very good for a long time and have as good a chance as anyone to go deep in the playoffs. The challenge for their management is keeping the right parts as they go through the annual cap crunch.

Contrast that to the Raptors, who advanced further in the playoffs earlier but started their success with much more established key players (DeMar was 24 when the Raps made that FIRST run to the playoffs, and was traded heading into his age 29 season, never mind Lowry who was actually who made the team tick). And Masai gave them year after year after year to get over the hump, even when years like 2014-15 were happening. I would expect the Leafs to take a similar approach to their core - build around it, fix weaknesses you find along the way, and eventually it either pays off, or your players are still falling short when in their prime, and when that happens you have a tough decision to make. But I think if management is smart (like Masai) that tough decision should still be a ways off.

I agree with all of this. I'm a Lightning fan and I was scared of the Leafs this year and I've never been scared of the Leafs. The Lightning are the favorite to win it all in my mind, how can they not be? The Leafs just got the toughest first round matchup possible, and put up an extremely good fight. Losing in game 7 by 1 goal is as close as a series can get.

I'm hoping the Leafs do something dumb and overreact, because if not they're going to be an actual problem for the Lightning from now on.