After being embarrassed, 7-3, in Game 1 against the Lightning, the Leafs won by three straight goals, including two on the road in overtime. In Game 4, Toronto trailed 4-1, then scored three third period goals in just over six minutes before winning in overtime. It’s been a season of championships for the Leafs on the ice and off, intergenerationally, in a city that is, to say the least, ready.
“It’s cool to be the Maple Leafs,” said Tavares, who was born in a suburb of Toronto and played for the Islanders before signing a seven-year, $77 million contract with his favorite boyhood team in 2018. For people, especially with some of the disappointments we’ve had.”
In November, Sittler cried next to Salming over the rigors of ALS, not hockey. Columnist for The Globe and Mail Cathal Kelly wrote that night It was Toronto’s Lou Gehrig moment, “the great picture of Leafs history over the last 20 years.”
Salming died a few weeks later at his home in Sweden.
What no one said out loud was that Gehrig died in June 1941, and the Yankees won the World Series four months later. The Leafs still have a long way to go, but symbology hangs heavily on this franchise, this city.
Sittler remembers that night when Leafs players shook Salming’s hand and he hugged. “There was no drought in the place,” he said. “It’s hard even to write a script like this, to make it happen.”
Now, against Florida, the Leafs would try to compose an ending to that unfinished script Salming and Sittler couldn’t write themselves.
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