Instant Reaction: Maple Leafs’ horror story of a season comes to a close with 3-1 loss to Senators
Of course, the pick is top-5 protected, and the Leafs played badly enough to get into the bottom 5, but there’s a greater than zero chance that the lottery balls fall the wrong way and the Leafs end up giving the Bruins the sixth overall pick in a stacked draft class. Fans now get to spend the two weeks having reserved dreams about potentially drafting a top-pair defenceman in Chase Reid or Keaton Verhoeff, or maybe a future elite centre in Caleb Malhotra, unable to fully enjoy those dreams because they won’t know if they have the pick until early May.
Oh, sorry, was I supposed to be covering the game here?
It was nice to see Jacob Quillan and Easton Cowan assist on William Nylander’s lone goal, providing perhaps a glimmer of hope into the future should the Leafs hire a new coach for next season, but that’s about all there is for positivity to take from that game.
In the end, it was a season from hell to cover, and exceptionally harder to consume as a fan. The Leafs will hold their locker room clean out three weeks earlier than usual and reflect on the first truly lost season since before Auston Matthews was drafted. The attention will shift to the ongoing search for a new head of hockey operations, and the mood of the fanbase will be dictated by those next steps.
Zero games left. It’s over.