Toronto Maple Leafs blow it all again and let's stop pretending anyone is shocked

Well, the Toronto Maple Leafs have blown it again in 2025, disappointing everyone yet surprising not a single soul with a heartbreaking blowout loss in a winner-take-all Game 7, dropping their Round 2 series versus the Florida Panthers.

It's a brutally familiar feeling.

But before you let optimism kick in and tell yourself "there's always next year," consider, for a moment, just how many times you have already uttered those words and been made to look foolish the following spring when history, predictably, repeated itself.

Being a Leafs fan during the playoffs is a uniquely repetitive and spirit-breaking form of punishment that, if applied by government authorities or non-state actors, would likely be banned under the Geneva Conventions.

And yet, we impose this gutwrenching misery on ourselves every year, seemingly forgetting each time a painful yet inevitable collapse ruined our previous spring.

So, instead of ranting and raving about how the bad men in blue shirts hurt us once again, I will offer up a cold chronological reminder of just how consistently and catastrophically the Leafs have, and logically, will continue to let fans down in the postseason.

Here is how the last 10 playoff runs went for the Toronto Maple Leafs (spoiler alert: they were all hot garbage), starting, perhaps, with the ugliest one of all.

2013: Boston Bruins

The Leafs were hyped as a contender for the first time in years after a seven-year absence from the postseason, but the excitement of fans eventually gave way to what is remembered as one of the most brutal downfalls in both the history of Toronto sports and across the NHL.

After rallying back from a 3-1 series deficit against the Boston Bruins, the Leafs were on the verge of a legendary comeback with a 4-1 lead late in the third period of Game 7, only for the wheels to come off in spectacular fashion. 

The Leafs would lose that game 5-4 in overtime, which still haunts many fans well over a decade after the fact.

2017: Washington Capitals

A battle between a first-overall pick/emerging superstar pitted against the player who would later become the NHL's top scorer of all time made this a memorable series for the history books, but less so for Leafs fans.

A new, young, and promising squad seemed to inherit the demons of the players that came before, and the Leafs were pushed to defeat in an uncomfortable Game 7.

But at least the sports media landscape got Dart Guy out of the disaster.

2018: Boston Bruins

More Bruins, more Game 7, more misery. The Leafs would drop their 2018 first-round matchup against a seemingly invulnerable Bruins squad, and despite an incredibly talented Leafs roster, it was getting harder to deny that the Leafs were lacking in the kind of grit and determination it would take to make a deep playoff run.

I won't go too deep into this Game 7 defeat, because you can only formulate so many paragraphs about the Leafs blowing a series to the Bruins.

2019: Boston Bruins

Oh, this again.

The Leafs once again fell to the Bruins in seven games in a back-and-forth series in the 2019 Playoffs. And while fans again sighed the familiar words "there's always next year," nobody could have predicted just how different that next year would be for almost every aspect of society — just not for the Leafs' fortunes.

2020: Columbus Blue Jackets

The pandemic season was a weird one to say the least, and, frankly, I am glad the Leafs didn't break their Cup curse that year, because it would have always been viewed as an asterisk season, with a shortened regular season and wonky playoff format that felt a bit off.

The Leafs faced the Blue Jackets in a best-of-five Qualifying Round, where they were once again at the brink of victory, only to fail to qualify for the first round.

It is debatable if this even counts as a playoff appearance, but, arguments aside, it sucked and made me miserable, so now you're reading about it.

2021: Montreal Canadiens

The 2021 playoffs were touted as the Leafs' year, and they even had that "All or Nothing" documentary made. With a 3-1 series lead against the underdog Habs, things were looking good, but the Leafs managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, finding new and creative ways to break the will of fans.

Habs in 7. Early golf season in May. Back to the drawing board, again.

2022: Tampa Bay Lightning

The Game 7 trail of destruction just kept on chugging along the following spring.

The Leafs still couldn't get past the first round in the '21-22 campaign, where the team dropped their Eastern Conference First Round series versus the Tampa Bay Lightning, with the Bolts taking the series 4–3.

2023: Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers

Fans partied in the streets when the Leafs finally ended their first-round curse in the 2023 Playoffs, taking out the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-2 in a series that, surprisingly, didn't stretch to seven games and end in heartbreak (though a Game 6 OT winner was all that stood between the team and that familiar do-or-die situation.)

But it was a short-lived high, as the Leafs would fall in five games just days later in their Round 2 series against the Florida Panthers in a particularly deflating series.

2024: Boston Bruins

Leafs fans entered the 2024 Playoffs with a sense of dread, once again pitted against the rival Boston Bruins, who had defeated the Buds in 2013, 2018, and 2019 first-round series.

And like all those Leafs-Bruins series that came before, the Bruins would come out on top in another soul-crushing battle that went to seven games and ended in Leafs heartbreak.

There's no point going into detail about this series. After finally breaking out of the first-round curse the year before, this one hurt bad. 

2025: Ottawa Senators, Florida Panthers

And that brings us to the present day, with the Leafs now once again heading into golf season prematurely after bolstering our hopes and then delivering the same old lacklustre result.

With new coach Craig Berube at the helm, this was another season where fans were promised something along the lines of "things will change." 

And things kind of did seem different at first. The Leafs held a 2-0 series lead going into Game 3 of their second-round series after taking out the Ottawa Senators in 6 games during Round 1.

Three consecutive losses would follow on the backs of a brutal injury to goaltender Anthony Stolarz and the complete disappearance of the team's star scorers when it mattered the most.

Despite some signs of life in Game 6, the team unravelled again in a decisive Game 7. And don't act like you didn't see it coming a mile away.

I'd join in the chorus of believers and say there's always next year, but we should, at this stage, all know better than to invest our emotions in anything but more of the same.

The team's "core four" may look very different next season, and after close to a decade of trying and failing with a promising roster of superstar talent, this could prove the end of the Toronto Maple Leafs as we know them.

And I genuinely can't tell you if that's a good thing or a bad thing for fans.