As of Wednesday, the Toronto Maple Leafs were one point out of the last wild card playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. The Washington Capitals were two points out. Over in the Western Conference, the Vancouver Canucks and Winnipeg Jets were both mathematically alive as the calendar flipped to April.

And yet the prevailing desire from their respective fans bases is that there’s more joy in failure than success, more satisfaction in falling short than pushing ahead, more benefit to the franchises who lose now in the long run than anything that a presumably short playoff run would provide.

Winning provides Band-Aids for internal organ failures.

Losing finally puts the team on the operating table.

(We’ll exempt the Nashville Predators fans from this one, despite questions about Barry Trotz and David Poile. That Pekka Rinne injury certainly was a factor this season. But Dirk Hoag is one fan that thinks change should arrive in Music City.)

There are probably some die-hards who hate the sentiment, who believe you support the team until the bitter end. They read Cody Franson begging fans not to “quit” on the Leafs and get angry that their blue-clad brethren would dare turn heel when the team needed them the most, like some halfwit who chastises Oilers fans for tossing their jerseys by buying a newspaper ad.

Which, of course, is a bafflingly misguided, because the fans actively hoping for their team to miss the playoffs have only the best intentions: It ain’t working, something has to change and a playoff berth is a temporary panacea that won’t be the catalyst for that necessary self-examination or, depending on the conditions, complete demolition of the roster and front office.

Winnipeg Jets fans might be the ones for whom a playoff berth would be widely celebrated, for the sheer novelty of it. But they also know that the core of ex-Thrashers, the porous goalie and the inability of management to significantly augment the roster is a recipe for middling results without a sniff of the Cup.

The Jets have been on an extended honeymoon, but they’ve been finally kicked out of the top floor suite. Fans are bitching about ticket policies. The media is demanding wholesale changes, with Gary Lawless declaring that Blake Wheeler and rookies Mark Scheifele and Jacob Trouba are their only untouchables.

Make the playoffs, and perhaps management moves forward with this rotten core. Miss them again, as the Jets will, and perhaps something radical happens for Winnipeg GM Kevin Cheveldayoff.

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Canucks fans have had a difficult time accepting that this wasn’t a playoff team, which is understandable when the team’s missed them just twice since 2001. Now that they won’t be, thus begins the hefty debates about their future.

Does GM Mike Gillis, he of the complete fumbling of the goaltending situation, go? Yankee Canuck wasn’t sure as of early March:

For the longest time Gillis was saddled with the criticism that he inherited a team that Burke and Nonis created. That chapter has most certainly closed. For at least the last two seasons the whispers were Vigneault's message wasn't getting through. That chapter obviously closed. Last summer the cap was to blame for lack of quality additions. That's off the table too. Fire Gillis? No. But he's certainly run out of places to hide.

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