TORONTO — It was different this year.
These weren’t the same Maple Leafs. They played a different style, a playoff style, a Craig Berube style. They were playing the way they needed to play to win in the playoffs. They knew how to win close games. They responded to adversity. They were tough. They were heavy. Their stars had embraced the right mentality to finally win.
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Not so much. The first two games of their second-round series with the defending champs have proved to be an aberration.
Even with a stronger defence and better goaltending, the Leafs are proving they aren’t so different after all. An embarrassing, humbling, shocking Game 5 defeat showed that.
All the same problems, the ones that destroyed Leaf team after Leaf team and ultimately ended Sheldon Keefe’s time as head coach, are emerging again at the worst possible time.
The stars have disappeared — again.
Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews got another chance to play together on Wednesday night and were promptly rolled by the Panthers’ No. 1 line in devastating fashion. The carnage happened almost right away. Shot attempts were 11-1 for Florida in the first period when Marner, Matthews and Matthew Knies were on the ice together – and crucially, the Panthers scored the first goal of the night when their top line was up against the Leafs top line and one more after that.
Home ice was supposed to bring back a matchup advantage for the Leafs.
Matthews and Marner would be a formidable counterpoint for Aleksander Barkov and Sam Reinhart.
They were the opposite.
The line was one and done on offence, stuck on the walls, unable to get inside and generate much of anything.
Matthews’ two best looks of the night were both denied by Sergei Bobrovsky, one off the right pad, one off the left pad.
Often, he parked himself in front of the net and tried to establish net-front position for tips and rebounds.
Matthews has scored two goals in 11 games this postseason, three in the last 21, a streak that dates back to the beginning of the second-round series with the Panthers in 2023. He has yet to score in 10 career playoff games against the Panthers.
It’s the similarity to past postseasons that makes it difficult to pin this solely on injury.
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Matthews is almost certainly not at 100 percent. It’s evident in the way he moves and shoots the puck, especially from distance. But he’s playing and the Leafs have needed more from him. They needed goals from him, just as they have (and haven’t gotten) in previous postseasons.
Matthews didn’t get enough help from his sidekick again either.
This game looked disturbingly similar to past big games for both Matthews and Marner. An extra gear is missing. An extra level of fire, urgency and engagement. Too much on the perimeter. Not dangerous. Not like the regular season.
Once again, Marner couldn’t create enough (anything?) for Matthews or himself. His failed blind pass into the middle cost the Leafs on the Panthers’ third goal. He has one goal since Game 1 of the first round.
THAT’S THREE UNANSWERED ‼️
Jesper Boqvist finishes off a Sam Reinhart feed to give the Panthers a 3-0 lead in Game 5 pic.twitter.com/3zab7M2Cg7
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) May 15, 2025
The Leafs need him to score and create for others.
Yet again, the Matthews-Marner connection is failing when the Leafs needed it most. The way the Leafs are built, these two need to be great, especially on nights like this.
Berube tried to stay the course with the twosome after Game 4, to keep things calm as he always had, to not panic. And besides, he didn’t like how things looked when William Nylander played with Matthews — even though he gave it very little runway to succeed in the regular season and even though the connection has proved tantalizing in the past.
The problem with his line of thinking was simple: How did it look with Marner? That wasn’t working either. Though their line fared OK early in the series, they were increasingly quiet as Matthews struggled to score and Marner struggled to get him the puck.
Berube declined to adjust.
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Flipping Nylander onto Matthews’ right wing might not have worked. Or maybe it would have sparked something different, anything different to change Game 5 before it broke open.
It was the same kind of decision on a smaller scale that’s hurt the Leafs again and again and again: Believing that doing things the same will lead to a different result if they just stick with it long enough.
The Leafs coach waited too long to make changes. It wasn’t until Game 5 was already effectively over that he removed Marner from Matthews’ wing and tried something else — playing Matthews with Nylander and John Tavares for a shift. He worked the blender more after that, when it was already too late. Maybe playing with Tavares might have gotten Marner going or Tavares, who has been held without a point in four of five games this series.
It’s one thing to be steady. It’s another to adjust when the situation warrants it.
Berube came in with the reputation of a coach who would challenge the stars, push them to greater heights — finally.
Unlike Keefe, he has declined to publicly criticize them at any point. Full-on meritocracy hasn’t really been there either. While others such as Nick Robertson and David Kämpf came in and out of the lineup for their errors and subpar play, Berube stood by a struggling Max Domi, even in the postseason when his rash of penalties stung the team.
Will Berube scratch him now?
A coach can only do so much, though this particular style, for this particular team, may not work in the playoffs after all.
Depth too is proving, again, to be an issue.
The Leafs have gotten nothing from their bottom six. And while it’s undoubtedly on the top players — the Matthews, Marners, Nylanders, John Tavares’ — to drive the team, others are allowed to contribute as well.
They did in the first round.
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This particular bunch though hasn’t proven good enough to do it in this series, not against the defending champs.
Too many one-dimensional players. Not like Florida.
The lack of a quality third-line centre (a longstanding issue) has been highlighted yet again in this series as Anton Lundell shines for the Panthers. Florida has had three — and even four — lines hurt the Leafs in this series.
With all of that said, this series isn’t over yet.
The Leafs could still win Game 6. Another Game 7 could still be in the cards. The Leafs can still prove they are in fact different. Right now, this team is looking just like the rest.
(Photo of Auston Matthews and Aleksander Barkov: Claus Andersen / Getty Images)
This news was originally published on this post .
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