This reminds me a lot of last year....
Well not of the leafs, they tanked midseason as per usual, BUT of the Canadienzzz. Buddy across the street was all "oh THIS is THE YEAR BOI!" and crap like that. Funny thing is he always makes fun of leaf fans "painting the parade route because they won a game", "shortage of blue paint at home depot, leafs won two in a row!", yet he does the same thing. I won two bets last year: 1) Leafs would have more points than bruins at end of season (and bruins sucked!), and 2) montreal would make it to the playoffs (that was a long shot when I made it, but price is the only good player on the team).
So yeah, leafs can't possibly screw up, even after that AWESOME showing at the winter classic. Was that 3 points in 8 minutes of the 3rd? Didn't they do almost the same thing the next game? So the goalie is weak, and if they become an actual threat other teams will learn to play against them. You have matthews, which is good, you have marner, and at times that guy with the green thing in his mouth, van halen or whatever, but otherwise there's not a lot there, especially 3rd and 4th lines. I won't beat a dead horse, but kadri and his nonexistent backcheck is still running a -5 (-25 overall), he's just a lump on the ice. At least he's better than lupul with a career +/- of -79. (lol).
So just saying, before leaf fans start blue-jaying all over the place, take a long deep look at what you actually have there. babcock can only push so much, and if you watched him closely after the winter classic he was livid. They know they can be beaten in the 3rd and that will take a toll when the games matter.
Anyway, they ARE playing better than they have in the past 20 years (not exaggerating). Let's see if they can kick the last-half slump that they've delivered for the past 15 years (oh except the shutout year where they didn't get a chance to slump of course...should we talk about how that went?)