Do you want a Playoff berth or a Top-5 draft pick? Well Mike Langlois at Vintage Leaf Memories would like to hear your take on it.

The sways of emotion that we experience as fans are natural. We get discouraged when things don’t go well and are often unduly critical and pessimistic. Conversely, we tend to wax unrealistically optimistic when the good guys win a few, or a young player looks good for a game or two (sometimes a shift or two). The future seems very bright at those moments.

Even now- as the Leafs push their way to the end line of a confusing 2011-’12 NHL season- when they win, we’re happy, even if they didn’t necessarily play that well. We see the positives, look at the good "stat" lines, and it tends to fill us with hope—hope that things will indeed get better, that another win (and maybe something more, like a playoff spot) is just around the corner.

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Are you of the "let’s make a run to the playoffs" contingent? Or would you rather the team lose enough to assure the organization a high lottery pick?

Would you be happy just letting the chips fall where they may? Even if the Leafs finish in, say, 9th place, and get the 8th to 10th overall pick in June, would you be good with that—as long as the team continues to improve?

So Leafs fans, what do you think?

From The Branches