How did Shanaplan Leafs lose their way?

Potential, sure, but so few results, promises unkept

- BRUCE ARTHUR, DAVE FESCHUK

Ron Powell still remembers plenty of details. The night the Maple Leafs last won the Stanley Cup in 1967, Powell remembers sitting in his family's season seats: first-row greens at Maple Leaf Gardens that his father first acquired in 1949.

He remembers George Armstrong, the Maple Leafs captain, briefly bobbling the Cup in the handoff from NHL commissioner Clarence Campbell. And more than 56 years later, Powell remembers believing it wouldn't be long until the Leafs got another hold on Lord Stanley's chalice.

"At the time I thought, we'll get more Cups lots of them, probably," Powell said.

Fifty-seven years later and counting, Powell laughed.

"Well, that didn't exactly pan out like I thought," he said.

It's hard to fathom that there was a time when the Leafs were the toast of hockey, and winners of four of the most recent six Cups, unless you're of a certain age. As Dave Hodge, the legendary broadcaster who attended the 1967 Stanley Cup parade, said recently: "It didn't seem then like (that parade) would matter like it has ... If you knew it wasn't going to happen again, maybe in your lifetime, you'd view it differently."

Can you imagine another parade, with this group? If the past eight post-season runs have confirmed anything, it's that the Shanaplan Leafs are uniquely inept in navigating the specific rigours of playoff hockey, and in some ways it's taken a decade to come full circle. When MLSE CEO Tim Leiweke introduced Shanahan as the Leafs' new president in 2014, Leiweke painted a bleak picture of Leafland, where the team had missed the playoffs in eight of the previous nine seasons.

"I spend a lot of time talking about culture and character... I'm not sure the Leafs have it," Leiweke said. "I definitely sense we lack an identity, and right now we're a team that lacks direction."