The Maple Leafs are out of time and out of excuses
The penultimate game of the Toronto Maple Leafs' regular season was a handy reference point for the long campaign that ends this week.
It was a low-event game, as desired by head coach Craig Berube in his first year with the team, with the Leafs leading 1-0 until blowing it open with three late goals against the Buffalo Sabres.
The second goal came from Mitch Marner, giving him 100 points for the first time.
Anthony Stolarz provided the shutout, including a series of late saves after the Sabres brought on an extra skater that looked like just the kind of stretch from a goaltender that often wins postseason games.
With the win, the Leafs clinched the Atlantic Division title, the franchise's first such crown in a non-pandemic season for 25 years. They last won a division title when Auston Matthews was three years old.
But it also meant that as the playoffs get underway, the Leafs face a somewhat uncomfortable truth: They're out of excuses.
It's no secret that this iteration of the Maple Leafs has a comically sad playoff record. Eight consecutive years, one playoff series victory. The last six of the seven first-round exits went to a decisive winner-take-all game that Toronto lost. It's not pretty.
The six-game first-round loss to Washington came in 2017 when the Leafs were just kids and ahead of schedule; no one really stressed about that one. Two came in pandemic-altered seasons, which were weird times for everyone.
The other four came against Boston and Tampa Bay, two Cup-winning teams with world-class talent. Those playoff losses provided no shortage of frustrations: the inability to win a do-or-die game, the lack of goals from their top players, but also the vagaries of the NHL playoff brackets, which always pitted the Leafs against one of those Atlantic powers. It's been a rite of spring for Leafs fans to lament that if the NHL had more flexibility with its playoff matchups, the team might not have been bounced so early so often.
But this year, no such complaint is available. Having locked down first place in the Atlantic with that tidy win over the Sabres, Toronto finally gets a wild-card team in the first round. Not the harbingers of doom from Tampa Bay or Florida, with their Cup pedigrees and frighteningly talented Russian goaltenders, but the plucky Ottawa Senators, who have missed the playoffs for the last seven years.
The Sens aren't the kind of first-round cannon fodder often seen in NHL playoff matchups. They're on a 15-8 run heading into Thursday night's season finale, have playoff-tested former Bruin Linus Ullmark in net, and have their own talented and annoying Tkachuk in Matthew's brother, Brady, who serves as Ottawa's captain. Perhaps most importantly, they have no pressure. After getting back to the postseason, whatever happens next is gravy.
But allowing for all that, this would be the worst Leafs loss yet. The team that's been beating its head against the playoff door for so long now has just about everything pointing in its direction. Marner has been spectacular, with a career-best season even as Matthews missed extended time, while also having the kind of starring role in Canada's 4 Nations win that should help when playoff games get tight. Matthews has battled injuries and seen his production drop off, but he also should be much less worn down than in previous playoff appearances.
Stolarz, after backing up Sergei Bobrovsky in Florida, has seized Toronto's starting job with the league's best save percentage and third-best goals-against average. And that last statistic is partly due to a stiffened defense, with the additions of Chris Tanev, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, and Brandon Carlo bolstering what has traditionally been Toronto's weak spot.
No one can predict which teams will go on a deep playoff run - one of Dallas or Colorado will be out after one round, after all - but the Leafs have to at least make a go of it this season. Through all of the embarrassing early exits, the franchise has replaced its general manager and its head coach, all while maintaining a roster that was - you've probably heard this before - built around four talented but expensive forwards. Maybe they should've pulled the chute on that structure in 2021, after the playoff faceplant against Montreal, or at least in 2023, after the lone series win against Tampa Bay was followed by an immediate collapse against Florida. But here they are again, with a top-heavy roster that just by the sheer law of averages seems to be due for a run into at least the middle of next month.
If not now, when?
At least if the playoff ouster comes quickly again, the fallout will be a little different in Toronto. Two of those four forwards - Marner and John Tavares - will be free agents. The question won't be whether they should run it back again. The question will be whether they'll even have the chance.
Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.