Christine Hilton, ESPN NHL reporter
Mitch Marner can’t avoid stating the obvious.
It wasn’t just that his Toronto Maple Leafs were defeated 5-1 by the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers on Nov. 27. It comes at a time when so many players, including captain Auston Matthews, Matthew Nurse, Max Domi, Max Pacioretty, David Kempf and Ryan Reeves, are sidelined. The brutal defeat prevented the club from achieving several victories.
“We were missing half the team in the frontcourt, man,” said Marner, who shook his head when asked why Toronto couldn’t generate any offense that night. “It’s too hard.”
However, the Maple Leafs have actually built their season around overcoming adversity — and not just in terms of injuries. Toronto is also adjusting to a new system under new coach Craig Berube, but the entire band isn’t coming together. In this case, establishing or changing identities is difficult to do.
Toronto was able to do this in large part due to the contributions of Marner (yes, more on him later). But the club’s success goes beyond just one factor. These are different Maple Leafs than the one that was eliminated from a first-round playoff series last spring for the third time in four years. They usually don’t resemble previous iterations – and that’s the point. Toronto is looking for different results, and this time is actually taking tangible steps to achieve them.
Granted, the Maple Leafs’ playoff fortunes are unpredictable and rightfully on the back burner (for now). Toronto’s focus is (and should be) on winning under any conditions — not always the previous advantage — and ultimately turning a pedigree of regular-season success into something greater.
What changes are happening in Toronto to achieve this goal? How did they get through their early-season woes with relative vigor, compete with the Panthers for the top seed in the Atlantic Division, and finish in the top 10 in NHL scoring percentage?
Let’s take a look.
“It keeps coming up Back to Craig. “
That’s how Maple Leafs general manager Brad Treliving introduced Berube as the team’s head coach in May, a week after firing former bench boss Sheldon Keefe. After Sheldon Keefe, Treliving hopes to become the undeniable “new voice” of Toronto.
Terry Living heard players would run through walls for Berube. But Berube has been breaking down old barriers with the Maple Leafs since he was hired.
Before Berubu, the Toronto Raptors’ reputation as an offensive powerhouse, for better or worse, was anchored by the so-called “core four”: Matthews, Marner, William Nylander and John Tavarre Promoted by Sri Lanka.
The Maple Leafs can score. They are gorgeous and fun. That offensive output helped them earn a variety of regular season honors, including the most wins in a season in franchise history (54) in 2021-22. Matthews, meanwhile, set the franchise record for most goals in a season (69) during his jaw-dropping performance in 2023-24.
However, Matthews has had a rocky start to the season. He missed nine games with an undisclosed injury that required him to seek treatment in Germany. Toronto rallied without its top center, going 7-2-0 thanks to a series of contributions that spawned an experimental nickname: the “Core Six.”
The expanded definition comes as Toronto is averaging fewer goals this season than at any other point in the Quad era, ranking 22nd in the league at 2.90 goals per game. At the same time last year, Toronto ranked second with 3.64 goals per game. In fact, the Maple Leafs have never averaged fewer than three goals per game this season since Matthews and company merged.
Well, times have changed. Toronto has only four players with double-digit goal totals this season — Matthews just scored his 10th against Detroit on Saturday. Matthew Nurse and Bobby McMahon have shouldered top-line responsibilities in Matthews’ absence, and their clutch performances put them among the elite of the Maple Leafs’ other key offensive players.
Because of that Core Six? They have scored a total of 70 goals this season. The rest of the team totaled 21 people.
The imbalance in scoring in the secondary didn’t derail the Maple Leafs for several reasons – one of the biggest being Marner’s all-around performance.
Toronto’s top winger The team scored 10 goals and scored 40 points in 30 games, ranking ninth in the league. Marner may be weaving the best season of his career, and the timing is perfect.
Marner, 27, is in a contract year and is set to become an unrestricted free agent in July. He’s been so elite at leading Toronto’s offense through health issues that the asking price for his next contract feels like it’s permanently pushed higher. You know, Marner has some amazingly comparable numbers from his closest peers.
Just last season, the Maple Leafs entered into similar contract negotiations with Nylander, signing an eight-year, $92 million contract. Matthews’ contract is valid until the 2026-27 season, with an average annual value of $13.25 million. So, does Marner guarantee there’s something in the middle? He’s currently making $10.9 million per year, has bargaining power, and has no apparent desire to rush to Toronto — especially given his production this season and in his career.
The Maple Leafs are also holding the cards tightly.
“I’ve learned not to comment on things like that,” Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan told TSN’s Gino Reda at an NHL Board of Governors meeting this month. “[Marner’s] Playing great hockey. He’s been a great player for us for a long time. “
fair enough. But in all of those seasons where the Maple Leafs were at the top of their game in scoring, Toronto never achieved its ultimate desire to be more versatile.
Berube comes in and he has Toronto playing like its best defensive team on Sunday.
Although the leaves’ Score It may be down, but they are preventing opponents from scoring at an impressive level. Toronto ranks fifth in goals against (2.60 per game), compared to 15th at this point last season (3.18 per game).
It’s a change from past Toronto teams that swung an open-court style of play that left them vulnerable to back-end breakdowns (and there were a lot of them). Treliving knew the Maple Leafs needed reinforcements on the blue line and made a move in the 2024 NHL Draft to acquire the rights to pending unrestricted free agent Chris Tanev. Tanev is everything Toronto wants to bolster its defense — he’s a top-tier all-purpose player with elite shot-blocking ability and a reputation for shutting down the middle of the ice.
Tanev was initially considered a potential top pairing with Morgan Rielly, but Tanev and Jake McCabe redefined Toronto’s defense. The duo squelched more chances than any other regular duo while shouldering the majority of Toronto’s defensive zone starts and opponents’ toughest matchups. Tanev and McCabe set the standard for the Toronto Raptors, forcing them to shoot from the outside and increasingly shutting out high-danger opportunities.
Of course, it’s not just Tanev and McCabe who deserve credit for Toronto’s improved defense. There has been collective support for this team for some time.
“The big change between this year and previous years is how well we play on defense,” Shanahan said. “You really admire the way Florida played. They’re not really known for their defense. They made a collective decision as a team that they were going to be a great defensive team, and that got them to a championship… … There’s still a long way to go, but the work we’ve put in defensively on the puck so far, we’ve been guarding the goal, knock on wood, and we just want to keep improving and get better at that.”
Ah yes, goalie. Another area the Maple Leafs are ecstatic to upgrade to is one that has been plagued by injuries of late.
As mentioned before, the forward troops were sometimes hit hard. Marner and Nylander are the only regulars to appear in every game. Toronto has had better luck with its defensemen and netminder staying healthy — just not recently. First, McCabe missed five games with an upper-body injury. Now, Anthony Stolarz joins the long list of players on the Maple Leafs roster this season.
The good news is that Toronto isn’t counting on sympathy from its league partners.
“We are the Maple Leafs,” McMahon said. “Nobody felt sorry for us. Everybody was down [but] No matter where we go, we’re going to face the best opponents from other teams. “
Toronto has Responding to the bell on Stolarz’s back. After exiting Thursday’s first quarter against Anaheim with a lower-body injury, Berube couldn’t hide his relief that his prognosis wasn’t worse. The entire story of Toronto’s season could be very different without Stolarz, but he could return later this week.
When asked about Stolarz being moved to IR on Sunday, Berube seemed to backtrack, saying: “We’ll get an update [him] A few days later; I won’t comment on that now. “
this is not great Maple Leafs news. Dennis Hildeby of the American Hockey League, who posted an .889 save percentage in the Maple Leafs’ comeback victory over Buffalo on Sunday, fills in for Stolarz and Vo. Woll can only do so much in his position.
Treliving signed Stolarz as a free agent last summer after the Panthers won the Cup in support of veteran Stolarz behind Sergei Bobrovsky. Not only did he form the reliable tandem with Joseph Wall that Toronto had been looking for in net, but he excelled in Toronto’s spotlight while posting the best save percentage in the league among goaltenders with at least 20 starts.
Stolarz’s dominance has helped propel the Maple Leafs even while missing most of their regular lineup. For the Maple Leafs, being able to rely on top goaltending doesn’t always work out – something Keefe knows all too well. Toronto’s former coach had high praise for Stolarz after he beat Keefe’s New Jersey Devils last week.
When asked what sets Toronto apart, Keefe surmised: “The other team has the best goaltender in the league.”
That praise applies to Wall, too. He compiled an 8-4-0 record with a .918 save percentage and 2.24 goals-against average, ranking him among the league’s best goaltenders with at least 10 starts.
The biggest concern for Wall is his health. The 26-year-old has been sidelined by injuries numerous times during his Maple Leafs career, even being forced to sit out a crucial Game 7 of Toronto’s first-round playoff series against the Boston Bruins last spring. He also missed time at the start of the season with “lower body tightness.”
That really opened the door for Stolarz to be the starter for the Maple Leafs — and he hasn’t looked back. Toronto still hopes Stolarz doesn’t miss too much time, but even a brief absence could allow the Maple Leafs to prove they can continue to come together and overcome obstacles that may have been stumbling blocks in the past.
Because the Maple Leafs are different now, right?
Have they proven it? Can this even be done in the regular season? Or do they need to prove it in the playoffs?
The reality now is that Toronto is more than just a resemblance to previous teams. There is a gritty spirit to this team that goes beyond an ever-evolving style of play. The Maple Leafs themselves are a little tougher. A little less fun. Perhaps of greater concern is the fact that the prime years of the forward core – whether four or six – are dwindling.
The windows in Toronto are still open. Now it’s time to see if they can put in enough effort to prevent it from another disappointing run in May.
