The Toronto Maple Leafs are no stranger to coming up short on the ice. In fact, they’re one of the least successful franchises since the start of the salary cap era. At the same time, Toronto is a huge hockey market and so far there hasn’t been an obvious correlation between their on-ice play and the actual value of the franchise.
That being said, this is still the worst team the Maple Leafs have offered since 1990-91 in terms of points percentage, which is remarkable when you remember that at one point this season they had a 19-9-3 record. In the midst of that complete of a collapse, 18,366 fans attended Toronto’s 2-1 loss to Minnesota tonight. That’s not a bad attendance figure, but it is the lowest number since the Air Canada Centre started hosting Leafs games in 1999, per Sportsnet’s Chris Johnston.
It looked worse as the game progressed:
It is empty in the ACC. 2-1 game in the third period. #Leafs pic.twitter.com/PBhscbE7HF
— James Mirtle (@mirtle) March 24, 2015
On the plus side for the Maple Leafs, they did outshoot Minnesota 18-5 in the third period and Joffrey Lupul recorded his first point since Feb. 3 on a Jake Gardiner goal. However, Wild goaltender Devan Dubnyk stayed strong, kicked out 35 of 36 shots. His efforts since coming to Minnesota from Arizona have now all-but locked the Wild into a playoff spot as they now have 89 points through 73 games.
Toronto fell to 27-41-6 this season.