Toronto Maple Leafs' playoff streak is NHL's longest
The Toronto Maple Leafs have finally killed their rivalry against the Boston Bruins.
Well, sort of.
Last night, the Leafs clinched their ninth consecutive postseason spot in the Stanley Cup playoffs, becoming the first team in the Atlantic Division to do so.
And while many are quick to point out that the Leafs might only have one playoff series win since 2004 (and no Stanley Cup wins since 1967), nobody in the NHL has been better at simply getting to the playoffs than Toronto.
The nine consecutive playoff appearances are currently the NHL’s longest active streak.
Toronto was tied with Boston with eight straight appearances, but it doesn’t appear that the Bruins will be joining them this year. Currently sitting last in the Atlantic Division after nine losses in a row, the free-falling Bruins are now 29th in the entire NHL and 10 points out of the final playoff berth with just seven games to go.
And while the Bruins have gotten the best of the Leafs in four different playoff series since 2013, they’ll finally be the ones heading to the golf courses early this year, barring an unprecedented late-season push.
The Colorado Avalanche and Tampa Bay Lightning are heading for their eighth straight appearance, the Carolina Hurricanes for their seventh, and both the Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers will make it six straight appearances this year. Outside of that, no other NHL team will have a streak longer than four years a row in the playoffs.
It’s perhaps a testament to Toronto’s core of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, and William Nylander, who have never missed the playoffs once in their nine full NHL seasons together since making the squad as rookies in 2016-17.
“It is hard to make the playoffs. It is tight. It is a tough league,” Leafs coach Craig Berube said after last night’s 3-2 win over the Panthers. “Our team has played really consistently this year and has done a really good job of changing their style of play, playing a certain way, and adapting to it over time. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a while.”
The NHL playoffs are slated to start on April 19.
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