TORONTO – They should be remembered as the 193 days where the Toronto Maple Leafs completely redefined what they are, and what they might eventually be.

A season that awoke a slumbering giant of a fanbase. Six-plus months of hockey that bested expectations and piqued imaginations. The year where an organization once-saddled with incredible baggage shed the backpack full of rocks and started charting an ambitious course up Mount Everest.

“They’re young, but they’re strong,” Alex Ovechkin said Sunday after his Washington Capitals survived a scare in Toronto. “They have a very good future.”

From the four-goal debut by Auston Matthews on opening night in Ottawa to the thrilling win outdoors on New Year’s Day to this unbelievably tense, six-game series against the Presidents’ Trophy winners, these Leafs grew up before our eyes.

They saved their best for the last seven weeks of the thrill ride – winning 11 of 14 games during a particularly challenging stretch in March to qualify for the playoffs before pushing the Capitals well outside their comfort zone in the first round.

All six games were decided by one goal, with Marcus Johansson securing Washington its clinching 2-1 victory on Sunday in the fifth game of the series to reach overtime.

The better team is moving on to face Pittsburgh, but they were only better by the smallest of margins.

“I think it’s tough to simulate anything even close to what just happened in the last couple weeks,” said Leafs centre Nazem Kadri. “So it’s good for our hockey team, and to think where we were a year ago to where we are now, it’s great to think about.”

It already seems like a lifetime ago where they finished 30th overall and served as a punching bag for the heavyweights. In reality, it’s less than a year since that finish put them in position to win the draft lottery and take Matthews.

They have made a habit of skewering timelines, this group.

Most didn’t give them a chance in a matchup against Washington and the series ended up being as close as they come. The total shots were 313-311 in favour of the Leafs. The aggregate score was 18-16 for the Caps.

“You’ve got to get to a certain level of game to find out what your peak is,” said Leafs coach Mike Babcock, who lamented the missed opportunity to get a Game 7 in Washington.

“Just because you can play regular season games [well] enough to get your team into the playoffs doesn’t mean you can win a championship. Those are way different people, way different players.”

His group showed that they are soon going to be part of the conversation.

You won’t find many low-scoring games better than the season-ending Game 6, where a nervous energy hung over the sold-out building as the teams took turns skating up and down, back and forth.

It was a reminder of how transformative this run has truly been.

The entire lower-bowl seemed to be decked out in blue and white sweaters, the same way you see in the more boisterous arenas. Outside, a line of people had stretched halfway around the building, up a sidewalk and all the way to Union Station just to gain admittance to Maple Leafs Square to watch the game on the big screen.

They saw a spellbinding affair, where Frederik Andersen and Braden Holtby looked unbeatable and Matthews scored off a member’s bounce to make it 1-0 with less than 13 minutes to play. The Leafs couldn’t nurse that lead into the clubhouse.

Once the game ended, the crowd rose to its feet to salute the season. The Air Canada Centre shook and Babcock walked onto the ice to wave to the fans alongside his players.

“Over the course of my five seasons there’s been some ups and downs,” said winger James van Riemsdyk, delivering an understatement. “The support we get is second to none and that gives you goosebumps, even after how it ended right there, how loud the building got for us. They know how far we’ve come and the effort we put into this.”

Added Andersen: “This feeling will be motivation for next year.”

There is much to look back on and smile.

For the players, the winds of change blew early. Matthews and Morgan Rielly started skating together in Toronto at the end of August and were both part of Team North America at the World Cup.

It took Rielly “about two minutes” before he realized the teenager was “for real.”

Soon, Leafs teammates were asking him for a scouting report on the No. 1 overall pick. Here’s how those conversations typically went down, according to Rielly:

“They’re like, ‘How good is he?’”

“I’m like, ‘He can play the game.’”

“And then they would be like, ‘Do you think he’s going to be our best player?’”

“I was like, ‘Uh, yeah.’”

That was evident right through these playoffs. Matthews scored goals in each of the last four games after putting up 40 goals and 69 points in the regular season.

In the emotional aftermath of the moment, Babcock was reluctant to discuss what he learned about his team in this series. But he quickly got to work on the job of attracting more players here this summer – something the organization is well-positioned to do with roughly $15 million in expiring contracts due to come off the salary cap.

“If you’re a good player and you like winning, this is the best place you could ever play,” said Babcock. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s fantastic. Now we’ve got to have a team to match that opportunity. That’s what we’re going to try grow to.

“We’ve got lots of good, young kids.”

It ended up being a season where a lot of those kids grew into men.

Should the Leafs continue their ascent and put themselves into position to win a Stanley Cup these next few years, we will forever look back on 2016-17 as the time the seeds were planted.

This is where the promise of something special was born.