The lure of a Game 7 is typically so much more appealing than its actual delivery. Hockey manages this better than basketball, to be sure (the seventh games in the NBA Playoffs this decade have an average final score of 113-95), but it still has the Toronto Maple Leafs and their self-administered crises of confidence with which to contend. With all due respect to the Washington Wizards, Miami Marlins, and New York Jets, nobody does fatalism like the Leafs, because nobody fails the big moments like the Leafs.
That said, Sunday night's 6-1 loss to the blatantly superior Florida Panthers came as a blow to even the most easily disillusioned Leaf supporters. Even if those fans were skeptical at best about their heroes' chances going into the arena, they still crashlanded midway through the second period into the standard Torontonian response to games gone bad and hopes turned sad—19,000 people sitting in pouty silence, at least until the end of the game when their silence turned to boos.
Those inexcusably faithful supporters must have suspected that the series would not be easy as it seemed when the Leafs won the first two games at home, then wrapped themselves in "we knew it" when they lost Games 3 and 4, and wallowed in shame-rage after a comedically one-sided exhibition in Game 5. The Ontarian pundits vomited en masse after that one, declaring that it was hard to see much hope going forward, until the Leafs won Game 6 in Sunrise, dragging them back for one more round of chirpy optimism.
Ahh, but Game 7 was so much worse than Game 5, even though it had the same final score. The Leafs who had been branded as different from their spine-deficient predecessors stayed alarmingly true to their decades of springtime disasters by rolling over yet again. The five-goal margin was, amazingly, a record for this kind of thing, and if the score didn't convince you—even if the lore of noted defoliant Brad Marchand (two assists when the game still mattered plus an empty-net goal) didn't make you nod in resignation—the arena's heavy silences did. If you can hear the skating and the passes from stick to stick, you have a crowd either gone already, or fishing for their keys knowing they'd been had again. Even the fan who threw a Leafs jersey on the ice (a reprise of a similar incident in Game 5, and one of several on the night) and caused TNT's Eddie Olczyk to turn all purple made more of an effort.
There are lots of numbers to explain 6-1 in Game 7, starting with 6-1 in Game 5, but Florida ended up with 91 shot attempts to Toronto's 56, which if nothing else tells how you much time the Panthers spent in the offensive end of the ice. Four of Florida's six goals came from bottom-sixers, while the best player by reputation on either team, Toronto's Auston Matthews, offered this scathing analysis as his principal contribution to the evening: "I just thought we had too many passengers.”
In short, the Leafs faced this Game 7 with its potential for glory and treated it like the second night of a back-to-back in Anaheim and Salt Lake City, accepting their fate with a historically weak effort—as those who know had suspected going in and those who believe in the power of Game 7 would have denied as unthinkable. But let's be honest here, just between pals: It's not like the jersey logo didn't give enough of a hint.