The Rangers takeaway from the Maple Leafs’ latest bout of misery

The Leafs are the Rangers, and the Rangers are the Leafs.

I think I may have made that argument in this weekend’s Slap Shots. Mika Zibanejad is Auston Matthews, and Artemi Panarin is Mitch Marner.

Except you know what? The Maple Leafs have not had Igor Shesterkin in net, let alone Henrik Lundqvist. Not even close. In that way the Maple Leafs remind me of the Flyers of the late ’90s and early ’00s, when Philadelphia never had the best goaltender when it came down to decisive games in those series they lost. The name Roman Čechmánek might ring a bell.

Who knows? This year they might have — well, they might have earned a saw-off against Sergei Bobrovsky, who continues to prove that a team can win with a goalie making five figures as its (co-)highest-paid player — if Anthony Stolarz hadn’t been knocked out of the series in Game 1.