Steve Dangle recaps and analyzes Game 45 of the Toronto Maple Leafs season against the best team ever assembled in the Colorado Avalanche

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Wonder how much i could write in this description before Steve noticed. Maybe let's include a short story about Steve the Maple Leafs fan:

Steve had worn the same blue Maple Leafs Jersey every playoff game since 2017. It was faded now, the collar frayed from years of nervous tugging, the logo cracked like old pavement. He was thirty-seven, born in Scarbs, raised on stories of ’67, and still believed—stubbornly, stupidly—that this was the year.Auston Matthews was the reason he still believed.

Steve had watched 34 become the best pure goal-scorer on the planet. He’d screamed himself hoarse when Auston buried that Michigan against Ottawa, cried actual tears (alone, in the dark) when he potted 60 in ’22. Matthews was Toronto’s messiah, the one who would finally deliver the city from four decades of exquisite torture. As long as 34 was on the ice, there

was still math that could work out.Then came the 2025 playoffs.

Steve watched in horror as the Toronto Maple Leafs blew a 3-1 series lead - but they didn't just blow it - they got annihilated on home ice twice in games 5 and 7. During that Game 7 the camera caught their Captain Auston defeated on the bench: shoulders slumped, mouth slightly open, eyes hollow. Not angry. Not sad. Just… done.Steve turned the TV off before the handshake line. He didn’t need to see it.He didn’t watch highlights. Didn’t read the autopsy threads on Reddit. Didn’t even open the group chat that had been alive since junior high. He just sat in his House, jersey still on, staring at the blank screen..

Steve told himself he was only flipping channels the next season. But then he saw this wonderful hockey team and stayed.Nathan MacKinnon was a hurricane in human form. Cale Makar moved like he’d been taught gravity as an optional setting. And the Avalanche played like they were personally offended by losing. Fast. Mean. Joyful. They didn’t clutch, they didn’t collapse, they just… won. MacKinnon took the puck coast to coast, split the defense like scissors through paper, and roofed it. The bench exploded. Makar jumped the boards to hug him like a little brother. The crowd in Ball Arena sounded like a jet engine.

Steve felt something shift in his chest. Not betrayal, exactly. More like waking up in a room you didn’t realize you’d been locked inside for twenty years. He started watching more. Quietly at first. Then he bought the red hat. Then the Makar jersey arrived (he told himself it was “just comfortable”). By the Holiday Break he was yelling at the TV again, but this time the yells ended in goals. He was screaming into a pillow so the neighbours wouldn’t call the police.

Alone. Steve stared at the screen for a long moment. He didn’t feel smug. He didn’t feel superior. He just felt… tired. Tired of waiting for someone to save him. Tired of loving a team that kept asking him to hurt. He pulled the old blue hoodie out of the closet one last time. Smoothed the cracked logo with his thumb. Then he folded it carefully, placed it in the bottom drawer, and closed it.The next morning he wore red. He still loved Auston Matthews. Probably always would. But love, Steve had finally learned, doesn’t mean you have to keep bleeding for it. Sometimes you just skate away. And for the first time in his life, the ice felt like freedom instead of punishment... Go Avs Go he secretly whispered before heading into work the next day

-

This story is entirely accurate and Steve is currently living his life as an secret Avs fan.

Drew

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