Despite all the heartbreak, there’s still at least one person who Be-Leafs.
Rory McIlroy, who broke a curse of his own recently by winning The Masters, put his faith in the Toronto Maple Leafs making it over the hump and winning the Stanley Cup at some point.
“If I can win the Masters, then the Leafs can win the Stanley Cup,” McIlroy said to reporters after being given a Leafs sweater by MLSE CEO Keith Pelley ahead of the RBC Canadian Open, which begins on Thursday at the TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley.
With the Masters win back in April, McIlroy joined a prestigious list of golfers to complete the career Grand Slam and ended an 11-year drought for victories at a major.
His 11-year drought pales in comparison to the 58-year wait Leafs fans have had to endure since last winning the Cup in 1967.
Much like McIlroy, however, the wait has been rampant in heartbreak. The Leafs’ latest elimination — a Game 7 loss to the Florida Panthers in the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs — beckons shades of McIlroy’s gut-wrenching defeat at the 2024 U.S. Open, when he bogeyed three of the final four holes to finish one stroke behind Bryson DeChambeau.
The Northern Irishman’s weight-off-the-shoulders win at the Masters was no simple feat either, as he had a roller-coaster final round — complete with some of the best and some of the worst shots he’s ever taken — to eventually secure the win.
“It’s very difficult. I think I’ve carried that burden since August 2014. It’s nearly 11 years. And not just about winning my next major, but the career Grand Slam. You know, trying to join a group of five players to do it, you know, watching a lot of my peers get green jackets in the process,” McIlroy said after winning at Augusta. “It was a heavy weight to carry, and thankfully now I don’t have to carry it, and it frees me up.”
The Leafs now find themselves in McIlroy’s shoes after he lost the U.S. Open, watching from the clubhouse in anger and frustration as the Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers duke it out for a shot at glory.