SIMMONS: Can the Maple Leafs bury their own past in the playoffs?

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There has never been a Maple Leafs season like this one. Not with this many points. Not with this many wins. Not with a 60-goal scorer in their lineup. Not with a coach whose regular-season numbers trump anyone who has ever coached here before.

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Not with this much on the line.

The Leafs begin a run at the Stanley Cup — which sounds kind of funny considering the circumstances — with quite possibly the best Toronto team assembled post Original Six. They begin playoffs on Monday not counting their wins or taking stock of their multitude of accomplishments, but all of this happening with a backdrop of doubt, hope and cynicism.

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That is a rather crazy juxtaposition of twists and turns, this real-life byplay between the Leafs and the playoffs. It’s not actually a Stanley Cup run — that comes later if it comes at all — it’s a first round of the playoffs run. A fight with demons. A place they haven’t been seemingly for centuries, or at least 18 years, give or take a week.

Their points now, really don’t mean anything. Home ice advantage, really, doesn’t necessarily mean anything. They are first in the NHL on the power play, seventh-best on penalty kill — better on both special teams than either of their possible first-round opponents. Everything is seemingly going their way.

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Everything but history.

Everything but the cloud of uncertainty that comes from even the largest and most optimistic of Maple Leafs fans.

This year, though, there are reasons to believe, maybe more than there have been in the past, which when piled up looks like playoff loss after playoff loss in the Brendan Shanahan era. The numbers aren’t really that simple.

They made the playoffs and lost when Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander played their first NHL seasons together. But they played terrific hockey against a better, more experienced Washington Capitals team. That was a loss to a club 23-points better — a loss that flipped on some overtime results that didn’t go Toronto’s way.

Forgotten now over time — how great a beginning that was for the new building Leafs.

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The next two seasons they played the Boston Bruins, a team ahead of them in the standings. In both years, they went to Game 7. In both years, Nazem Kadri, a significant Leafs player, wound up foolishly suspended. In the first series, the better team won. In the second series, the Leafs had the opportunity to win Round 1 at home in Game 6 and weren’t able to meet the playoff requirements. But when the film was broken down at the end of the second straight Game 7 defeat, the Leafs determined they were the better team in the series.

They just didn’t get a better result.

That was the last time they could say that in a playoff series. In the first COVID season with NHL playoffs in the summer, the Leafs didn’t compete hard enough, didn’t play well enough, to beat a rather ordinary Columbus Blue Jackets team. And the real lost opportunity, the one that hurts to this day, is the first-round loss to Montreal a year ago, up 3-1, home-ice advantage, and then the club apparently didn’t show up for Games 5- 6-and-7.

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Montreal went on to head to the Stanley Cup Finals. The Leafs spent the next 12 months wondering – what the hell?

Now it’s time to begin anew, after two series they served better in, two series they outright lost and one in which they weren’t ready for an upper-echelon team, even though they stretched the Bruins to seven games in 2018.

Why is this Leafs team different from others in the past? That can be seen and quantified on paper — but playoffs are their own animal. The game changes. The pace changes. The pressure changes. Every mistake, every loose puck battle, every giveaway is amplified.

So what makes these Leafs more capable today?

Begin with the first line. The Auston Matthews-Mitch Marner-Michael Bunting line is not the best line in the NHL. It’s probably second best to the Calgary trio of Elias Lindholm-Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk.

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The Matthews line is the kind of line no one wants to match up against. Matthews is the premier goal scorer in hockey today. Marner is one of the premier playmakers from the wing. Bunting, the apparent rookie, has fit in nicely with the stars and has grown his game from him throughout his first full NHL season.

There isn’t an equivalent line to the Matthews trio in the Eastern Conference — but the questions about these three, and mostly two, will be apparent from Monday on. Marner didn’t score in last year’s playoffs or the year before that one. Matthews had one goal against Montreal. Every time either of them hit a new mark as this splendid season went on – the questions from the outside followed almost immediately.

“I’ll believe it when I see it in the playoffs.”

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That thought is almost universal in Leafs Nation.

Winning the Rocket Richard Trophy is lovely — but if Matthews doesn’t score in the first round, what does the award really mean? Scoring more points per game than any Leafs winger in the modern era was fine for Marner, but again, if he doesn’t produce what do all those regular-season accomplishments really mean?

Tampa Bay won the Stanley Cup the past two seasons. His star forward Nikita Kucherov had 66 playoff points in those two Cup runs. Brayden Point had 56. Those are the kind of totals expected of stars in the post-season. The Leafs have never had that from anyone since Doug Gilmour in 1994.

The second line by itself is a question for Toronto, and the composition of the line will certainly change throughout the playoffs, however long they last. John Tavares will play centre, maybe with William
Nylander, maybe without him.

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Individually, Tavares and Nylander are fine players. Collectively, not always. Nylander was on the ice for the most goals against at even strength than any Leafs forward and Tavares was right behind him. If the Matthews line is going to be checked – and it certainly will be the attention of their opponent – ​​then Tavares and Nylander and whomever else plays with that group will be called up to score and maybe more importantly, not to get scored against.

The real difference in this Leafs team, compared to teams of the past, and when compared with recent championship teams, is the third line that Sheldon Keefe likes to employ. He loves the line that has David Kampf centering the emerging speedy wingers Pierre Engvall and Ilya Mikheyev. They are the kind of third lines NHL teams hate playing against. They can play offense, they can play defense, they can kill penalties.

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The last two seasons, the Lightning won the Cup and its third line of Yanni Gourde, Barclay Goodrow and Blake Coleman proved to be a difference-maker for the champions. When Washington won the Cup, Lars Eller centering a third line, was a huge factor. When Chicago won its first two Stanley Cups, prior to its third, David Bolland centered the third line and in 2013 scored the Stanley Cup-winning goal.

The Leafs haven’t had this kind of line before. Haven’t had a lineup with this many different looks and possibilities.

A lot will focus on coach Keefe, whose regular-season numbers are the greatest in Leafs history. Neither Pat Quinn nor Pat Burns had a winning percentage anywhere near Keefe’s career mark of .677, coming off a season of .698 heading into Friday night. But he has to wear the losses to Columbus and Montreal: Those teams did not meet expectations in those rounds. Those teams came up small when it mattered most. That’s obviously a player issue, but also a management issue, a coaching issue.

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This is the best team Keefe has had and the toughest first-round opponent he will have faced. But in his time as Toronto coach, the Leafs have added Mark Giordano, TJ Brodie, and Ilya Lyubushkin on defense along with draft picks Timothy Liljegren and Rasmus Sandin; they’ve added and helped develop, Bunting, Alex Kerfoot, Ondrej Kase, Kampf, Mikheyev, Engvall, Colin Blackwell, Wayne Simmonds and goaltender Jack Campbell.

They’ve improved offensively, improved defensively, improved on special teams. All of those being regular-season statistics.

It always comes back to that. What happens now? Can this Leafs team bury its past? This is the deepest and strongest the Leafs have ever been. That doesn’t matter now: It’s playoff time.

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