T here was a feeling throughout the team that perhaps they would have a better chance to erase that number on the road, away from the noise that was creeping up in the city they call home. That double-digit number hung over the Leafs as they gathered for a team dinner at Meat Market, a steakhouse in Tampa’s upscale Hyde Park neighbourhood. After the Leafs had taken a 3-1 series lead, the visitors had stifled the Leafs in Toronto in Game 5, raising the total of elimination games this Leafs core had failed to win to 10. Late in the afternoon on Friday when the Leafs’ charter touched down in Tampa, the Lightning had the momentum in the series. These are the scenes of happiness on a day that changed the course of this Leafs core and, perhaps, the franchise. “It’s been a long time coming,” Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe said. And, again, for the first time in nearly a generation, there was a strange feeling throughout the entire organization in the spring: happiness. But instead, he made it to the dressing room unharmed and bared his toothless grin for his friends to see.Īnd his grin wasn’t the only one inside a loud-ass Leafs room that, in these types of games for years now, would have been far quieter.īecause for the first time since 2004, the Leafs had exorcised their postseason demons with a win in the first round of the playoffs.
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