Guess what: The Maple Leafs vanished when it mattered most

Craig Berube is learning that with this Toronto Maple Leafs team, it's never too early to panic.

Even after the coach watched his players botch a 3-1 lead in Game 3, when they were on the verge of taking a 3-0 series stranglehold against the defending champions, and after they played their worst game of the postseason in a dispiriting Game 4 loss, Berube, in his first season with the team, had reason to believe they could respond positively.

That is, after all, what good hockey teams do. The Maple Leafs, a group that won the Atlantic Division ahead of recent Stanley Cup-winning teams like Tampa Bay and these Florida Panthers, fit that bill. Matthew Tkachuk even said it earlier in the series: Toronto had a better season than Florida, so it should be the favorite. (That now seems very much like trolling.)

But instead of providing a response, instead of coming out flying at home in Game 5, instead of playing like a team with a desperate need to avoid a third straight loss, Berube's Leafs came out like the hockey equivalent of a wet firecracker. A golf shot shanked into the woods. A ski jump that ends with equipment scattered all over the hillside and a medical team called into action.

The same things have been said and written about these Leafs at this time of year, every year, so now we must resort to analogies just for something different. They are Charlie Brown trying to kick a football. They are the Stormtroopers who rush through a door, blasters firing, only to be killed when the Jedi deflects the lasers back at them. They are Wile E. Coyote once again losing out to gravity and an anvil.

They are, at least, finding slightly new ways to disappoint their long-suffering fans. Instead of their usual route of a Game 7 loss in Round 1, they played well enough in the first round to advance for only the second time in nine consecutive playoff appearances.

And unlike the previous series victory in 2023, which was followed by an immediate three-game belly flop against the Panthers on the way to a quick exit, this year they collected two early wins over Florida - including a Game 1 victory in which they looked shockingly playoff-ready - before delivering three straight losses that have them on the verge of yet another ouster.

So, a slightly modified script. Thanks for small mercies, I guess.

The bizarre thing about this long run of playoff struggles is that the Maple Leafs of today are a considerably different team from those that disappointed in previous springs. They aren't the plucky and untested kids of the early years. They aren't relying on iffy goaltending solutions like Jack Campbell and Ilya Samsonov. They added veteran talent and depth to the blue line with Chris Tanev, Brandon Carlo, and Oliver Ekman-Larsson.

They parted ways with a general manager and replaced the coach twice, most recently with Berube, who won a Cup in 2019 with St. Louis and spent this season getting his team to play a playoff-ready style that was supposed to translate to the postseason.

And yet they still find themselves flailing about at the absolute worst time. A Game 5 in which the 6-1 score didn't flatter the Panthers, in which the Leafs were outshot 13-6 in a tone-setting first period, and in which Joseph Woll - the only real option for Toronto in net with Anthony Stolarz injured - gave up five goals on 25 shots and was pulled.

This particular Leafs crisis is like that old line about bankruptcy: it happened slowly, then all at once.

And in the end, the one consistent thing about the Maple Leafs over this near-decade is the thing that even the most casual hockey fan knows: they have those four star forwards, plus defenseman Morgan Rielly, who've again collectively gone quiet exactly when they needed to be loud.

What more can be said at this point? Auston Matthews is now without a goal in 10 straight second-round playoff games. Mitch Marner, coming off a career year and headed to free agency, suddenly can't find an offensive spark. William Nylander and John Tavares, who as recently as three games ago were both having excellent postseasons, joined Matthews and Marner in the muck. The power play, keyed by all that expensive star power, has gone icy cold. The past few sentences were not from 2023 against the Panthers, or any of the previous playoff seasons, but they could be.

Berube will almost certainly mix things up for Game 6 on Friday - he has little choice. Break up the Matthews-Marner pairing, juggle the line combinations, see if he can fluke his way into discovering an effective third-line center.

Like Mike Babcock and Sheldon Keefe before him, the coach has been reduced to messing around on the margins to try to compensate for the one thing that's been beyond any of them to do: get the stars to produce when their playoff lives are on the line.

There's one more chance to do it Friday. Leafs Nation could be forgiven for making other plans.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.