Open this photo in gallery: Toronto Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews battles with Ottawa Senators center Shane Pinto in game four of the first round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa on April 26.Marc DesRosiers/Reuters After they got bounced again from the playoffs last year, the Maple Leafs ran out of new ways to describe how it felt. So they stopped trying. During the ritual Toronto debasement of locker clear out day, they all used the same words – “frustrating” and “disappointing.” “Every year, it’s just as frustrating to lose,” said William Nylander. That could be the motto of the franchise. There are a lot of ways to describe what it’s like to pull for the Leafs (a serious condition that I am not afflicted by), but sadness is probably best. Being a Leafs fan is like choosing to watch the last 15 minutes of The Notebook over and over again. Occasionally, they are exciting. Sometimes even hopeful. But that only heightens the sadness that you know is coming. Whatever it is, it’s the opposite of fun. Believing in the Leafs never feels like a hobby should – easy and breezy. It’s work that you do in your spare time. Instead of them paying you, you pay them. This is the secret of the franchise’s enormous financial success. They’ve branded and monetized masochism. The Leafs lost a tough one on Saturday night to the Ottawa Senators. When you get a four-minute man advantage in overtime, you should win. The Leafs didn’t. After Toronto pooched that opportunity, Ottawa scored on a speculative half-shot from the point that found its way through three people. The usual Leafs reaction would be something between cockiness and terror. The Leafs have lost a lot of different ways in the last few years, but never via the reverse sweep. That would complete their bingo card. But instead of coming out wired, this version of the Leafs came out easy. Grateful, even. “Three overtimes [in Games 2, 3 and 4]. It’s great hockey out there,” said forward Matthew Knies. “I’m sure it’s fun to watch.” What a bizarrely positive way for a Toronto Maple Leaf to put anything. You can tell Knies grew up a long way from here. Nylander used the same formulation – “fun to watch.” A few things about this team changed this year. They hired Craig Berube to be the coach. His signal talent – not letting the city get to him. There’s been a tweak in net, a couple of switches on defence, some added depth at the deadline, but nothing fundamental. If there’s a big difference, it isn’t practical. It’s philosophical. It’s only four games, and it’s happening against a team that is learning how to be in the post-season in real time, but is it possible that the Leafs have finally gotten out of their own heads? You weren’t going to know that until they’d lost one. Now that they have, the signs are promising. You don’t need to be a therapist to figure out that self-doubt has always been the Leafs’ biggest problem. One post-season series win in eight years from a team that regularly tops 100 regular season points? That’s not bad luck. That’s flop sweat. Getting past their mental barrier was always going to be the issue. The same problem infects the fan base. Leafs fans don’t expect to win. The louder they say they do, the surer you are that they don’t. They come by this cynicism more honestly than the players, who only have to bear this rolling disaster for the length of time they play here. The typical Leafs fan is serving life in hockey super max. You’d have lost your faith, too. Every fan base is connected to its team, but only a few are bound together. They move in lockstep. I’ll believe the Leafs’ approach has changed when the average Leafs fan can say the same thing. So, assuming you’re a supporter of the Toronto NHL franchise – are you having fun? Not the sort of fun where you get a charge watching your guys beat up on someone else’s guys for a change. The sort of fun where you something goes wrong and your instant reaction is not, ‘Oh God, here we go again.’ When Auston Matthews doesn’t score again, do you find yourself thinking, ‘Even I’d have scored by now’? Or are you able to function at full capacity through your working hours? On game days, do you find yourself catastrophizing on the bus home, imagining the ways in which Anthony Stolarz could injure himself at the same time that he’s letting in the game-winning goal? Or are you able to genuinely look forward to three hours of sports-based entertainment? It’s been a while since I rooted for any team, so I see this whole ‘live or die with the boys’ thing from a distance. Why outsource your happiness to people who keep letting you down? It’s much more relaxing to watch sports as sports, with hoped-for outcomes taken out of it. I get that the frisson between winning and losing – a sort of emotional gambling – is the point for most people. When they lose, it’s terrible for you. But if they win? It’s a jackpot you didn’t have to pay to enter. But it also strikes me that in order to truly succeed, you must do as Buddha says and let go of attachment. Great teams have that Zen in common – they’re not trying to win, so they win. When they lose, it doesn’t diminish their joy in competition. They aren’t pushing. They’re being. Think of the Oilers, the Islanders or the Red Wings at their best. Different teams with different approaches and wildly different personnel, but identical attitudes. They had fun. You can’t teach this, though Phil Jackson tried. It is or it isn’t. Are the Leafs there now? It’s way too early to say that. But for the first time that I can remember, both the team and the people who suffer along with them appear to be moving slowly in that direction.