Toronto Maple Leafs' Tyler Bertuzzi leaves the ice between John Tavares and Morgan Rielly after the team lost to the Boston Bruins in overtime during Game 7 of an NHL hockey Stanley Cup first-round playoff series on May 4 in Boston.Michael Dwyer/The Associated Press
Immediately after losing in overtime on Saturday night, the Maple Leafs’ main guys clocked in for their second jobs.
“We were right there all series,” William Nylander said.
“I thought we were right there with them,” Auston Matthews said.
“There’s no doubt that we’re right there,” John Tavares said.
After winning one playoff round in six years, it should be obvious that Toronto’s core four are not primarily in the business of winning hockey championships. Their main goal is continuing on exactly as they are. They play alike, they promise alike and they lose alike. They can’t even be bothered to come up with slightly different excuses.
Every year, the same thing: “So close,” “Best group I’ve ever been part of,” “Right there.”
On the level of pure entertainment, this year’s show was better than earlier instalments. Game 7 against the Bruins in Boston on Saturday night was high drama. Until, in the last 10 seconds, it turned to vaudeville.
There are no good ways to lose a series in overtime, but allowing your opponent to float a one-hundred-foot billiards pass off the end boards to its best scorer, who has just tiptoed through the middle of your entire squad, while your goalie sits so far back in his net it looks like he is sheltering in place, must be among the worse.
As pure theatre, yes, better.
But practically, this was the absolute worst way for the Leafs to end it. If they’d given up in Game 5, the drumbeat for change would be so loud you’d be out in the street in front of your place right now wondering what that banging is.
This way, the excuses come sequenced and studio ready. This is a continuity result on a team that has a lot of experience doing one thing: losing.
It’s not as though the Leafs have to come up with any new or creative explanations for what happened. All the classic lines that have worked before will work again.
You will find yourself nodding along, thinking, “Well, maybe they were right there.”
Except for the first game, when Toronto came out so tuned up it was practically hysterical, and got run over.
Or the third game, where the Leafs napped through a couple of periods.
And the fourth game, before which they said they wouldn’t do that again and they did.
The reason this series got strung out until the last hockey move wasn’t that the Leafs played so well. It was because Boston tried handing it back to them.
After the first four games, the officials got wise to Brad Marchand’s tricks and David Pastrnak didn’t arrive until last call. The rest of the Bruins skaters were somewhere between okay and a little disappointing. The series came down to Boston goaltender Jeremy Swayman, the weight of history and the Leafs’ tendency toward self-destruction.
Forget about right there. The lessons of this series are that the Leafs, as currently constructed, are all the way over there. Somewhere in the vicinity of Nowheresville.
They played seven periods without Matthews and those were their best seven periods in the series.
Mitch Marner was invisible throughout, though you did catch a glimpse of him right at the end as Pastrnak treated him like a practice pylon.
Tavares was good for a US$4-million player, though they’ll have to keep paying him US$11-million.
Only Nylander delivered, scoring all of Toronto’s goals in the last two games (which is its own sort of indictment).
Overall, the impression left is that the Leafs are not only incorrigible, but often uncoachable, and probably unfixable.
Sheldon Keefe’s excuses for his wayward students were always weak, but over the past week they become sad. After his stars warred on the bench in Game 4, Keefe called it “progress.”
Which suggests what exactly? That they’ve only started talking to each other? Now? Eight years in?
What’s the next step on this hundred-million-dollar journey of healing? Will getting them together over the holidays to take snaps in their matching jam-jams help?
Some teams are playing chess and some are playing checkers. The Leafs are playing tic-tac-toe against a chicken. You and I are the chicken.
Having destroyed the reputations of two pretty good coaches, what’s it going to take to get Toronto’s right-there core on the same page? Who is capable of teaching these malcontents how to love the game and each other? Is Emilio Estevez available?
So for the hundredth summer in a row, the Leafs will pretend to confront a dilemma – “Maybe it’s not them. Maybe it’s us.”
We’ve all been there, but you and I are not contractually obligated to ourselves. We don’t have no-trade clauses. We can change. The Leafs cannot.
In a sensible world, Toronto would be looking at the Bruins and thinking, “How do I become that?” Because while the Leafs are a good team that loses, the Bruins are an average team that wins.
The first step would be finding players who lead, rather than appointing leaders who meme each other on the bench. However long Marner plays in the NHL, he can never complain again. As soon as he does, he’ll be hit with a million online messages of “Stop crying, bro.”
In the past couple of years, the Bruins lost the league’s most intimidating presence, Zdeno Chara, and its best defensive forward, Patrice Bergeron, and remained the same immovable object.
It suggests that the Bruins way isn’t personnel. It’s between the ears. It’s getting 20 guys to buy into a system. Keefe has trouble getting the Leafs to chip in for lunch.
Then there is the ease with which Boston carries itself in the world. From the coach down, the Bruins look like they are having a good time.
The Leafs make playing professional hockey look like a work-release program. When was the last time you saw one of the Leafs’ big stars tell a joke? Or make fun of himself? Never. They’re too fragile.
So there’s another year gone. Sure, the way it ended was a bummer, but the next board of directors’ meeting is going to be lit. They can have the guys from Finance pop out of a cake and shower the owners with hundos.
If you missed any of it, don’t worry. They’re going to do it again next year, with the same guys making the same promises to make the same changes ending in the same results. Constancy – that’s the Leafs way.
I hope you’re looking forward to it. I’m sure the Bruins are.