The Maple Leafs — who rose to such glorious heights in the regular season, but fell again too early in the playoffs — will gather one last time on Tuesday.
It’s locker cleanout day at the Ford Performance Centre, though few actually pack their things since so many of them will resume workouts in short order.
The day is really about exit interviews — a final chat with the coaching staff and management, as well as each other and the media — and trying to come to grips with why another season ended abruptly.
A sober second look is descending on the Leafs. Folks went easy on them in the aftermath of Saturday’s Game 7 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning: They gave their all. They lost to the defending champions. They looked so sad when it was all over.
But they aren’t off the hook simply because they looked better in defeat than last year. They had a full, healthy lineup and lost. They were up three games to two and lost. They left it all on the line and lost. Their best players played their best, and lost.
Is it the personnel? Is it players not executing the coach’s plan? Was it the wrong plan, or the wrong coach? If it’s personnel or coaching, then that’s on general manager Kyle Dubas. If they keep doing the same thing year after year and expect different results, that’s on team president Brendan Shanahan.
It’s an interesting mess.
A year ago, Shanahan spoke of developing a killer instinct; that didn’t happen. Dubas spoke of adding physicality and toughness; that backfired. They were the most penalized team in the first round, and succumbed in part because of Tampa’s power play.
And after two seasons of being outcoached in the playoffs, Sheldon Keefe outcoached himself. Starting the third line and third defense pair in Game 4 led to the Leafs being down a goal in the first minute. When you’re on the road and have a chance to put an opponent down three games to one, you start your top line and hope to get off to a good start. It’s that simple; don’t overthink it. But he did.
So there’s some thinking to be done at the top. The very top—ownership—seems happy. The ratings are good on Sportsnet and TSN, whose parent companies control 75 per cent of the team. The only way MLSE changes direction at the management level is if the fan base turns away, or becomes indifferent.
The Leafs who earn $5 million (US) and up — Auston Matthews, John Tavares, Mitch Marner, Morgan Rielly, William Nylander, Jake Muzzin, TJ Brodie — are probably all coming back.
They’ll likely continue to leak middle-class players. Ilya Mikheyev will follow Zach Hyman out the door. Maybe Alex Kerfoot needs to be traded to create some cap space. Dubas will look for more free-agent gems like Michael Bunting and David Kämpf, who will still be on bargain contracts next year.
The biggest question is in goal. Jack Campbell is an unrestricted free agent and would demand at least as much as Petr Mrázek ($3.8 million a year) to return. But should the Leafs want him back? Campbell needs a lot of nurturing, a lot of support, to be at his best. That might be a bit exhausting.
If not him, who? Mrazek? Three groin injuries in one season suggests he’d be more valuable to the Leafs on long-term injured reserve for the remaining two seasons of his contract. At least they could use his salary-cap hit from him.
Did Erik Källgren show enough in a dozen late-season starts? Is Joe Woll ready? Is there a free agent who can plug the hole? The Leafs are all about analytics, but figuring out goalies is still a bit more like voodoo.
If the Leafs come back more or less in tact, you can probably pencil in another 50- to 60-goal season for Matthews, another 90 to 100 points for Marner, another year of fans fretting that Tavares is getting too old, that Rielly is not Victor Hedman and that Nylander should be traded.
That would add up to another 100-plus-point season and a seventh straight playoff appearance — much better than missing seven in a row (2006-12). But by the time the next playoffs come around, they’ll be on 19 years since winning a round, and 56 years since they last won the Stanley Cup.
Oh, and at the end of next season Matthews will be eligible to sign a contract extension, or signal his intention to become the most coveted 26-year-old unrestricted free agent in the history of the game in 2024.
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