Читать книгу Hope and Heartbreak in Toronto. Life as a Maple Leafs Fan онлайн

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Given the way the playoffs broke that year, it may have been the best opportunity the club would ever have to win the Stanley Cup. Top seeds Boston and Philadelphia had been eliminated in the first round and their nemesis the previous two post-seasons, New Jersey, also exited at that stage.

There is a saying in sports that it’s often not the teams you beat but the ones you don’t have to that determines championships. With that credo in mind, 2002 should have been the Leafs’ year. It wasn’t, of course, and as more time has passed, I’ve slowly grown to accept that perhaps the rest of the NHL had a point when the Leafs that season were referred to as the most hated team in the league.[1]

I don’t necessarily agree, but I now understand what riled others, particularly in other parts of Canada. Leafs winger Darcy Tucker had hands-down his best year as an NHL player, but he was also not afraid to push the boundaries too much and too often. His low-bridge hit on the Islanders’ Michael Peca in Game 5 of the first-round series was the perfect example of the Leafs’ penchant for just tickling the grey area between what was allowed and what shouldn’t be. The snapshot lives on as perhaps the best modern-day example of what ails the Leafs. Tucker, a player of reasonable ability, but also one with some flaws, going low on Peca was cheap, plain and simple. Replays then, as they do now, clearly showed Tucker looking to the referee right after making contact to see if he was going to be penalized. Players who honestly believe they’ve done nothing wrong generally don’t glance back to see if they’ve been caught.