The Toronto Maple Leafs are a challenging team to evaluate because they haven’t reached the Stanley Cup Final since the NHL expanded past six teams, holding one of the longest championship droughts in professional sports.

Their prolonged period of disappointment makes it tough to assess them fairly. While there’s more to analyzing hockey teams than just who wins the Cup, the Leafs’ track record complicates this. Even though the Leafs attract criticism, the existence of analysis sites demonstrates that championships aren’t the sole measure of success. However, evaluating their ongoing struggles in this light can be tricky.

For instance, defending former Leafs GM Kyle Dubas is tough because he tried to innovate in a field resistant to change. Despite his efforts, his tenure is often seen as a failure due to lack of championships, even though it may not be entirely justified.

The unpredictability of NHL playoffs and the constraints of a salary cap make it clear that luck plays a huge role. Dubas is arguably the best GM the Leafs have had, and Brendan Shanahan could be considered one of the top executives in hockey, though his success was partly due to favorable circumstances.

The Leafs’ series of misfortunes, like losing 11 straight elimination games or Mitch Marner’s playoff goal drought, reflects bad luck rather than incompetence. For a team capable of forcing every series to seven games, such streaks are more about randomness than poor performance.

Evaluating the Leafs should take these factors into account rather than assuming incompetence because of their lack of championships. Winning is the ultimate goal, but a purely binary view overlooks the complexities involved. For example, the Leafs signed major contracts just before a global pandemic, expecting the salary cap to rise significantly, but that didn’t happen as anticipated. Despite this, they remained competitive, which speaks to their effective roster-building strategy.

The Leafs’ recent approach—combining Dubas’ strategies with traditional moves—has been a mix of innovation and conventional methods. Though they’ve faced criticism, their performance over the past seven years suggests they’ve been quite successful overall, despite the results.

In summary, while the Leafs may appear to be a failure by conventional standards due to their lack of recent championships, a deeper look reveals that they have been successful in various aspects, hindered largely by bad luck and external factors.