Now that the dust has cleared and everyone's had time to calm down, what is the perception of how things ended for the Toronto Maple Leafs?
Was that Game 7 loss to the Florida Panthers as bad as we initially thought? Or did the fact that the defending Cup champions rolled past the Carolina Hurricanes change anyone's opinion?
In hindsight, maybe the Leafs should not blow things up. Maybe fans should take solace in the fact that the Leafs took a (baby) step forward in the playoffs went further than they have in the past two decades.
Maybe they should re-sign not only Matthew Knies, but also Mitch Marner and John Tavares. Maybe they should roll things back.
That is what Toronto Sun columnist suggested, arguing that the current Leafs might be the third-best team in the NHL. But if it is what GM Brad Treliving is also thinking on the eve of the Stanley Cup final between the Panthers and Edmonton Oilers, then he isn’t the right man for the job.
Which teams, right now, are better than the Toronto Maple Leafs?-
You can start with the Eastern Conference champion Florida Panthers, then move to the Western Conference champion Edmonton Oilers.
But after that, who? The Carolina Hurricanes? No. The Washington Capitals? No. The Tampa Bay Lightning? No. The New Jersey Devils? No. The Ottawa Senators? No. The Montreal Canadiens? No. You move to the Western Conference and you can’t feel good about how the Dallas Stars played against the Oilers. You can’t feel good about the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Winnipeg Jets or the ease with which Vegas lost to Edmonton in the second round of the playoffs.
Who's better than the Leafs?
Florida and Edmonton are. Same goes for Washington, Tampa Bay, Montreal, Vegas, Colorado and even St. Louis.
Why? Because those teams actually went all the way to the final in recent years. And in most cases, they won. That's something that the Leafs haven't done. They haven't even reached the third round.
Yes, the Maple Leafs got closer to winning a Cup than they have in the Auston Matthews-era. But they are still so far, far away when it comes to getting the job done.
After all, there is a difference between getting close to beating an opponent and actually beating that opponent and then winning another two rounds for a championship.
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Roll things back? Isn’t that what they’ve done for the past nine years.
This wasn’t the first time that the Leafs lost to a team that reached the Stanley Cup final. In 2019, they lost in the first round to Boston, which then lost to St. Louis in the final. In 2021, they lost in the first round to Montreal, which then lost to Tampa Bay in the final. A year later, they lost in the first round to Tampa Bay, which won in the final. The next year, they lost in the second round to Florida, which then lost in the final to Vegas.
Rinse. Wash. Repeat.
This year, they did it again. After losing to the Panthers, the Leafs then watched as the defending champs beat Carolina in five easy games. So, of course, the thinking is that had Toronto won Game 7 then the Leafs could have been looking at a Stanley Cup final match-up against the Oilers.
Except for one thing: the Leafs didn’t beat the Panthers in Game 7. They lost. And like their previous close calls, they lost big.
Stanley Cup champions don’t get embarrassed at home, as they Leafs did in Games 5 and 7 to the Panthers. Their superstars don’t go MIA when the team needs them the most. They don’t point fingers or make excuses. They don’t blame the media, the fans and their opponents.
They just win.
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That’s why the Leafs need to change their DNA, as Treliving put it in last week's season-ending news conference. That means breaking up the core and making the kind of significant change that could in theory cause the Leafs to take a step backwards in order to take a step forward.
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