All roads lead to same midseason questions for Maple Leafs

The Toronto Maple Leafs, a team that's been thoroughly committed to running it back year after year, are having yet another familiar season.

After 44 games, amid a mini-slump, they've won 27 times.

Last season, after four losses in five contests in mid-January, they'd tallied 22 wins in their first 44.

In the three seasons before that, the win totals through 44 outings were 26, 30, and 28.

That means that, over five seasons, they average 26.6 wins at this point in the campaign. This year's tally of 27 looks to be right on pace.

Over the last few seasons, the Leafs hired a new general manager, then a new head coach, and now a new top defense pairing and a different goaltending tandem, but it seems as though they've settled at their usual level: a good portion of the campaign still to go, but waiting for the playoffs. Many of the same questions still need to be answered. Do they have enough secondary scoring? Will the goaltending hold up? And, most importantly, will their star forwards prove themselves capable of making a deep playoff run?

That last question, the one that team president Brendan Shanahan evidently continues to answer in the affirmative because he has repeatedly resisted breaking up the four-forward core, continues to loom over everything.

And it won't be addressed again until late April.

Sure, there are some noticeable differences with this version of the Maple Leafs. Chris Tanev has been exactly the kind of top-pair defender the front office hoped he'd be. Oliver Ekman-Larsson has been solid as another defensive addition playing considerable minutes. More importantly, he hasn't been the kind of way-past-his-prime addition that has often plagued the Leafs.

Anthony Stolarz was a revelation in goal, a giant with a dazzling .927 save percentage who looked like he might finally be the team's long-sought solution between the pipes - until he got hurt last month. Still, if he returns in his pre-injury form, he could be a tremendous playoff asset.

And then there's the new coach, Craig Berube, the bad cop to former coach Sheldon Keefe's good cop. Berube - who is certainly more gruff than his predecessor - prefers a more low-event brand of hockey that is, in theory, more suitable for the postseason.

Whether it'll work with this roster is another question. Toronto's recent playoff failures haven't been caused by sloppy, wide-open firewagon hockey, but by a lack of goals at crucial times. In the Leafs' four losses to the Boston Bruins in the first round last year, their goal totals were one, one, two, and one. (And in their three wins: three, two, and two.)

The optimistic view, through blue-and-white colored glasses, is that playing a full season of playoff-style hockey will have the Leafs better prepared to navigate the postseason when it actually arrives. The argument is that Toronto's repeated ousters in previous campaigns were at least partly because the team struggled to play a different way in April and May than it had over the preceding six months.

It's plausible. General manager Brad Treliving doesn't seem to fully believe that theory, though, since he's been fairly open about his desire to make changes before the trade deadline.

Treliving told reporters this week that he was happy with the play of Auston Matthews and John Tavares, his top two centers. (Not exactly a bold take.) "Are there ways that we can continue to look at adding to that? Is that an area that we'd like to continue to look at? Sure," Treliving said, adding that most of the league probably feels the same way. What team with playoff aspirations wouldn't like to add a two-way third-line center who can check a little and add a scoring punch?

Of course, even the addition of midseason reinforcements wouldn't be new for these Maple Leafs. They added Ryan O'Reilly, a two-way centre with a strong playoff resume at the trade deadline two years ago, which did lead to the first (and only) postseason series win in the Core Four era.

O'Reilly is, coincidentally enough, one of the players being floated as a possible trade acquisition this season, to be reunited with the coach with whom he won a Stanley Cup in St. Louis.

Let's hope someone hung on to the nameplate that used to hang over his locker.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.