Mirtle: The Maple Leafs imploded again. How they lost shows what needs to change

Sports

add

Greetings. Thanks for being here. Again.

We are gathered here today to remember a hockey team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, and its truly remarkable era of non-success (2016-25). On Sunday night, they died as they had lived over the past nine years, showing enough promise that they were “different” to draw everyone in before imploding in spectacular fashion in the biggest moments of their season.

(Official cause of death this time: mauled by Panther.)

Though these Leafs are now gone, they will always live on in our hearts, remembered not-all-that-fondly for winning a ton of regular-season games, piling up individual accolades (and cap hits), and coming up small whenever a true showing of determination and fortitude was needed.

May they rest in peace.

If you want a silver lining here, after a brutal 6-1 loss in Game 7, I can offer you only this: The Leafs left no grey area here. No one who watched this series can come away convinced that they are “this close” to breaking through. No one can defend the status quo.

If there was lingering doubt that this group was different than the ones that lost their previous six winner-take-all games, it was obliterated by Toronto’s two worst performances of the season in Game 5 and Game 7. This was a series that was right there, after they caught Florida off guard in the first three games. It was then given away with successively weaker performances.

The deep frustration that has been building in this fan base over the past six or seven years is now so obvious and unavoidable, for the players, coaches, management, and — perhaps most importantly — ownership, that major change is needed.

That was hammered home rather emphatically when the fans in attendance threw jerseys on the ice and booed the Leafs off of it repeatedly, two home games in a row.

Jerseys have hit the ice in Toronto pic.twitter.com/vJ8mEqdxLi

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) May 19, 2025

“For me, it’s all between the ears,” head coach Craig Berube said of his team’s performance in those games. “It’s a mindset. These guys are capable of doing it. You’ve just got to execute it. And we didn’t execute it … That’s the bottom line.”

He was also asked if the composition of this team’s roster needs to change to “have more fire in it.”

“I think this team has fire,” Berube said. “I can’t explain (what happened) right now, nor do I want to, (with Game) 5 and (Game) 7 at home. Obviously (there are) things that we have to look at and talk about as an organization.”

Frankly, it’s a long list. And the fact that they waited so long makes it that much harder.

The Leafs only scored 17 goals in the series, 2.43 per game, and only four of them came in the final four games. The power play — with four of the highest-paid players in the NHL on the top unit — converted at only 10 percent. They were heavily outshot and outplayed with the series on the line multiple times, but most egregiously in Game 7, when Florida ran them out of the rink in outshooting them 18-5 in the second period.

Toronto’s $47 million Core Four group of forwards scored only once in four games after Game 3, following a pattern late in series that’s persisted for years, where they get tighter and less effective the more that is on the line.

When it happened in 2018 and 2019, the excuse was that this was a young team up against a very strong opponent in the then-dominant Boston Bruins.

When it happened in 2020 and 2021, against lesser competition, the conversation was over whether these were anomalies, due to a hot goalie or bad luck, and if a change to the mix around them was needed to get the most out of their still-learning stars.

But the debate over whether they needed a true heart transplant at the top of the lineup started in earnest two or three years ago, after they didn’t learn anything following frittering away that 3-1 series lead against the Montreal Canadiens. That upper management dug in and held on, changing everything but the main pieces of the roster through what’s now four more ugly losses, has led us to here.

There’s no more debate to be had about the transplant. The question is how to make it happen and how radical the surgery needs to be.

And, vitally: Who will be making the decisions?

Team president Brendan Shanahan has felt like a dead man walking here for a while now, in the final year of his contract and barely visible around the management team. It’s hard to imagine a world where he’s retained after 11 years at the helm.

It’s also difficult to see how they can bring back Mitch Marner after another tough postseason, not when a contract couldn’t get signed all year, they tried to trade him at the deadline, and with free agency set to open 43 days from now.

Do you also cut loose John Tavares, the 34-year-old heart-and-soul former captain also set to become a free agent? Or does retaining him at a deep hometown discount still make sense after a series where he had one even-strength point in seven games — and only three all postseason?

Those are the top-line, big-picture questions, but they’re far from the only ones. Auston Matthews and Morgan Rielly, two of the team’s leaders, also underperformed and have big contracts with no-movement clauses. The supporting cast couldn’t contribute enough when it counted, especially compared to all the goals the Panthers got down the lineup as the series wore on. (Six Leafs forwards finished without a single goal through 13 postseason games despite playing almost every single night.)

And it didn’t help that Toronto had more than $6 million in free-agent misfires sitting in the press box between David Kämpf, Jani Hakanpää, Ryan Reaves and Nick Robertson.

We’ll do a fuller accounting of the looming roster decisions and what comes next in the days to come. But what I’ll finish with here is that I know there will still be some defenders of this Leafs team, given the way they changed their game stylistically, finished fourth overall during the season and lost in a Game 7 to the defending champs. If this had been a one-off performance, I could understand some of the texts I’ve received from hockey people around the league the past few days questioning whether they need to be radically reworked.

But this was hardly a one-off. And the reality is that to win the Stanley Cup, you have to beat quality teams, again and again, in big games.

Brad Marchand moves down the handshake line after eliminating the Leafs in yet another Game 7. (Claus Andersen / Getty Images)

When Brad Marchand met with the media here in Toronto in the aftermath of Game 7, he pointed out that for the Panthers, this wasn’t even really a big game. Not after they’d won a championship in Game 7 last June, stifling a powerhouse Edmonton Oilers team after losing three straight, with infamy awaiting if they’d lost.

That was a big game, Marchand said. This one was just a stepping stone to get to the ones that truly matter.

Florida played this game on Sunday night like it was easy. Like it was made for them. The Leafs played it like it was impossible. Like it broke them.

You look at the final four teams left standing here, with Florida set to meet the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference final and Edmonton about to take on the Dallas Stars in the West, and the bar they’ve set as organizations is that it’s Stanley Cup or bust every year.

Their roads to that goal will, in many cases, go through two or three very good teams, with clutch performances needed throughout the lineup in games 6 and 7 to pull it off. They all have a great shot at glory, too.

The Leafs seem so far away from all of that, even if, on paper, this series was close. They lost by one game, sure, but if you never show up for the ones that count, does it matter how many you lose by?

I don’t think so. And, finally, mercifully, for this fan base, there’s no way anyone at the top can either.

(Top photo: Mathew Tsang / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

Share on

email

Previous

trending_flat

Ranking the 25 best college football teams of the 2000s: Is 2001 Miami or 2019 LSU No. 1?

Sports

Next

trending_flat

Nine numbers that reflect the state of the up-and-down Cleveland Guardians

Sports