All or Nothing: Toronto Maple Leafs brings fans behind-the-scenes into the Toronto Maple Leafs’ locker room and inside Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas’s office to capture the 2020-21 season.
Viewers get a close look at some of the Leafs’ top players on the ice and what they do in their off time. The docu-series does a great job showing how an NHL team works, for example when viewers see the conversations between Dubas and head coach Sheldon Keefe about roster alterations, trades, etc. Keefe is a focus in the show and viewers will get to see everything he does and why. There is always a method to the madness.
All or Nothing had a very difficult task from the very beginning: everyone already knows the outcome of the season because the show was released about three months after the season ended.
Will Arnett, an actor form Toronto, is a lifelong Leafs fan who was picked to narrate the show. At the beginning, viewers see a montage of heartbreaking loses in the playoffs. There is a thought that last season was supposed to be the year for the Leafs to finally get passed the first round, but then Arnett says, “Oh yeah, we lost again.”
The show is structured differently from other similar documentaries.
It’s not chronological order but rather focuses on one story line at a time throughout the whole season, and then once complete it goes into a new story line. This is great for someone who may not be into hockey as much as others, because it keeps viewers hooked one episode at a time, rather than alternating story lines a few times an episode and having the viewer forget something that’s brought up again later.
The series chooses some big storylines to follow from last season, but also ones that went under the radar and didn’t hit major media outlets. This was a great idea because even though it is nice to see the big storylines from the view of the players and organization, it is also interesting to see things that weren’t even talked about but had a big impact inside the organization.
The final episode is the most gut wrenching for Leafs fans.
It shows a gruesome injury that happened in the first game of the series. The show also does its job in making viewers think there’s no way the team will lose the playoff series but of course, as most know, the Leafs did lose.
Overall, the show is great. It was always going to leave Leafs fans upset (all over again) but that was the point.
The creativity in production keeps the viewer engaged. The show ends with a brief look into the future, which is this season that we are in currently.
The only real issue with the show is that last year wasn’t really the ‘All or Nothing’ year: this one is.
This is likely the last chance this group of players will get when it comes to playoff success. To really drive the meaning of the show home, Prime Video should have done one more season: this one.