The Toronto Maple Leafs can never avoid being the butt-end of hockey jokes, even if it’s coming from United States President Joe Biden.
The Commander-in-Chief was visiting Canadian Parliament on his first trip to Canada since being sworn into office in Jan. 2021, and when talking about Canada and USA’s relationship, he mentioned how they share sports leagues, including one of Canada’s national pastimes, hockey.
“I like all your hockey teams (in Canada), except the Leafs,” said Biden during his address.
Biden cited his reason for disliking the Leafs was because they beat the Philadelphia Flyers on Jan. 8 when he and his wife Jill were in attendance at Wells Fargo Center. The Leafs not only beat the Flyers, but they routed them, 6-2, to complete a sweep on their season series, which likely added to Biden’s displeasure with the team.
Born in Scranton, Pa., Biden was always a Flyers fan but also says that marrying his wife secured that rooting interest, as she was a big fan of the team as well. Biden is considered to be the first President-elect to be a Flyers fan.
Biden likely doesn’t have much to cheer for this season, as the Flyers have been inconsistent all year, and look neither poised to contend for the Cup nor like they’ll have high lottery odds in this year’s Connor Bedard sweepstakes. The Flyers currently have the seventh-worst record in the league, going 27-32-12 with just 11 games left on the schedule.
It makes sense that they were swept by the Leafs then, as they’ve been a strong team all season, and have basically set up their seventh consecutive playoff spot since December, although their magic number to clinch is still five points, helped by their 6-2 win over the Florida Panthers on Thursday night. They sit fifth in the league at the moment with a 43-19-9 record.
That said, the Leafs' regular season success hasn’t spared them from being the joke of the league, as they have yet to win a playoff series since 2004, losing seven straight first-round matchups with six of them coming in a win-or-go-home game seven (or game five in the case of the best-of-five play-in series against the Columbus Blue Jackets in the playoff bubble in 2020). It is currently the longest active drought for a series win, with the Panthers ending the previous longest one last season with a series win over the Washington Capitals.
The Leafs also haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1967, the end of the Original Six era of hockey. It’s not only the longest active drought, but the longest of all time in hockey, and is tied for the sixth-longest drought in major North American sports with the Atlanta Falcons of the NFL.
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