However, it's not all doom and gloom for the storied franchise
William Nylander, left, Ilya Lyubushkin, centre, and Timothy Liljegren of the Toronto Maple Leafs react after being defeated by the Boston Bruins in Game Seven of the First Round of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs at TD Garden on May 4, 2024 in Boston
To no one’s surprise, fans of the Maple Leafs are a miserable bunch.
According to a recent poll for Casino.org, supporters of the team registered an unhappiness score of 73.14%. That ranked behind fans of the Calgary Flames (89%) and the Arizona Coyotes (81%), which relocated to Utah under new management in April.
The survey — which asked 2,000 NHL fans using a weighted index — assessed factors such as Stanley Cup optimism, contentment with management, mood changes when players get injured, irritation levels when their team loses, and overall game-day experience.
Nearly 60% of fans believe that Toronto doesn’t stand a chance of making it to the Stanley Cup Finals, while almost 46% currently don’t trust the Leafs’ management.
Fans get the most upset when the Leafs lose, averaging a 3.1 score on a scale of 1 to 5 (not upset at all to extremely upset), the highest across the NHL, while 55% of Leaf fans admit their mood negatively changes when key players get injured.
The poll also found more than four-in-five (82.7%) supporters find the game-day experience — tickets, merchandise, food and drinks — to be too expensive, but 8% find the overall game-day experience to be bad.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom for the storied franchise. About 29% say they aren’t happy with the current players on the roster.
The Leafs’ Stanley Cup drought sits at 57 years and counting. The club also hasn’t been to the conference finals in more than two decades.
In fact, in the last decade, the Leafs have only won one playoff series, last year against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The average age of respondents was 39.5 years old. The representative sample comprised 62.6% male, 36.4% female, 0.5% non-binary, and 0.5% transgender.
