Weak East gives Maple Leafs' final weeks unusual meaning

It's been a long time since the Toronto Maple Leafs played regular-season hockey in March and April that felt particularly meaningful.

The last time was probably 2017, the first playoff year under head coach Mike Babcock when the young core was proving it was dangerous at the NHL level a little ahead of schedule.

Since then, the pre-playoff period has been relatively stakes-free. With the exception of the COVID season and its jumbled divisions, the Leafs have finished second or third in the Atlantic Division, which meant a first-round playoff series against the team right next to them in the standings. There's always been a team much better than them at the top of the Atlantic - Tampa Bay, then Boston, then Florida - so the last part of the campaign was about waiting for that tough playoff matchup. Which usually didn't end well.

This season seemed like it would be more of the same. Once it became clear the roster wouldn't be significantly altered this past summer, and that new coach Craig Berube would install a more disciplined defensive system in the fall, the question immediately became whether this stuff would work in the playoffs. The front office didn't replace Sheldon Keefe with Berube because they wanted him to squeeze out a few more wins in December.

But despite long stretches without captain Auston Matthews and goaltender Anthony Stolarz due to injury, the Leafs are heading into March in first place in the Atlantic. This isn't because Toronto is lights-out great - the team's points percentage was higher in three of the last four seasons - but because the rest of the Atlantic has regressed a little. (And in Boston's case, a lot.)

Instead of metaphorically skating lazy circles for the season's final weeks, the Leafs have a chance to fight for that division title - which would likely mean a first-round playoff series against happy-to-be-there Ottawa or Detroit instead of battle-tested Florida or Tampa Bay.

And so, the question becomes: Will they fight for it? Or will they resign themselves to a few weeks of rest and playoff preparation?

The answer will likely become clearer after next week's trade deadline. The Leafs of recent seasons have been busy at this time of year, grabbing rental players for both ends of the ice and scrambling to fit as many warm bodies as they can under the salary cap. But they've avoided the all-in kind of move, at least in part because they never have much in the way of salary-cap wiggle room. Even when they snagged Ryan O'Reilly at the trade deadline two years ago, they did it with (mostly) draft picks.

This season presents a chance for a bigger swing, in part because the Leafs are one of the better teams in a wide-open East. Would general manager Brad Treliving be willing to move one - or both - of Toronto's best forward prospects, Easton Cowan and Fraser Minten, if it meant landing a top-six forward or top-four defenseman? How much could he get for Nick Robertson, a former prized prospect who has scored lately but struggled to lock down a role in Toronto? How much urgency will Treliving and team president Brendan Shanahan feel to make a big push with Mitch Marner and John Tavares unrestricted free agents in the summer?

Probably not that much urgency, I'd guess. Most of the roster is signed for multiple seasons, and with a sharply rising salary cap, the expectation is that Marner and Tavares will both remain in Toronto. Even if a rival team were to swoop in and give Marner a monster offer that the Leafs couldn't match, Toronto would have the kind of cap room that they haven't had in years - which they once used to land Tavares.

In Boston on Tuesday night, the Leafs delivered the style of game that often works in April: a pair of Marner goals, depth scoring from Robertson and Pontus Holmberg, and a couple of big saves from Stolarz in overtime to ultimately allow Toronto to pull out an unlikely comeback win. But that effort could be looked at in different ways. Is it proof that this team could use a big acquisition for a playoff push? Or is it evidence that the Leafs, finally getting the kind of contributions from the bottom half of the lineup that they have been desperate for all season, already have what they need for a sustained April run?

The fan base will, of course, want trades. Trades are fun, and it's easy to imagine just about any acquisition as the much-needed final piece of the puzzle. (Admittedly, no one was imagining that last year about Joel Edmundson.)

But for Treliving, the answer is less obvious. He has all his chips. We'll see what he does with them.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.