Maple Leafs' playoff run ends with yet another Game 7 failure
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Talk about a full team effort.
A fully pathetic, brutal, uninspiring team effort.
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Maple Leafs' playoff run ends with yet another Game 7 failure Back to video
The Maple Leafs’ season is over after yet another Game 7 failure in the Auston Matthews-Mitch Marner-William Nylander era.
Cheap suits don’t fold like the Leafs did on Sunday night in a 6-1 loss against the Florida Panthers at Scotiabank Arena.
The Panthers will meet the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference final, starting on Tuesday.
All that chatter from the Leafs about playing the same way they did in a 2-0 win in Game 6 — smart, efficient, patient — turned out to be nothing more than hollow words.
The victory on Friday in Florida, evidently, was a mirage.
Leafs sweaters started hitting the ice in the third period. Fans streamed to the exits, as they did when the Leafs were getting trounced in Game 5. Those who remained had enough enthusiasm to boo at times.
The Leafs’ actions spoke loudly with their season on the line. They were unable to match the defending Stanley Cup champions in puck battles and play along the wall. The Leafs had no pushback.
“Coming off that Game 6, come home for Game 7, you’re feeling really good,” coach Craig Berube said. “They were the better team tonight. They were the more desperate team. They were the more aggressive team. That’s what I take out of the game. You win a Game 6, that’s great. You come home. You have to have a level of desperation, determination. And I didn’t feel we had it.”
There’s no way to see the game as anything but the last one in a Leafs uniform for Marner, who’ll be the most attractive player in free agency despite being a part of repeated playoff losses in Toronto. There were boos when Marner had the puck in the final minutes.
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Not sure where fellow free-agent John Tavares fits in going forward either, if at all.
It was the sixth Game 7 for the trio of Marner, Matthews and Nylander. Matthews has three assists in Game 7s; Marner has two. Nylander has two goals and two assists. The Leafs have won none of those games.
The Panthers, who had 75 shot attempts through two periods, scored three goals in a span of six minutes 24 seconds in the second period.
Seth Jones fired a shot over Joseph Woll’s right shoulder at 3:15, Anton Lundell scored on a rebound at 7:18 and Jonah Gadjovich slipped the puck under Woll at 9:39.
After the Gadjovich goal, Berube unloaded on his players.
By the end of the period, fans were sarcastically cheering routine saves by Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky.
Max Domi scored for the Leafs early in third, but the goal was answered by an Eetu Luostarinen tip past Woll less than a minute later. Sam Reinhart added another Panthers goal and Brad Marchand, now 5-0 against the Leafs in Game 7s, scored into an empty net.
A year and a day after Berube was hired, the Leafs’ start to the game couldn’t have been more baffling. They weren’t close to being ready once the puck dropped. Through the first 6 1/2 minutes, the Panthers had 21 shot attempts. The Leafs didn’t have a single one.
Toronto had no composure. The defensive-zone play was akin to a group that was playing together for the first time. The Leafs were soft. They couldn’t handle a Panthers forecheck that, as good as it is, was able to be controlled by the Leafs at times in the series.
The Panthers recorded the first seven shots on goal, but the Leafs managed to recover and had the better scoring chances in the second half of the first.
Bobrovsky stopped Steven Lorentz on a breakaway and made a tough stop on Nylander at the side of the net.
The Leafs gutted through a minor for too many men in the final two minutes of the first period, but were unable to carry any momentum into the second.
“I felt like we were ready to play,” Matthews said. “I felt like we were in a good mindset. The first 10 minutes, they came out strong. The next 10 minutes, I thought we controlled play. And then I just thought we had too many passengers throughout the rest of the game, and just weren’t on the same page.”
The Leafs are 0-7 in their past seven Game 7s. They haven’t won a Game 7 since the first round of the 2004 playoffs against the Ottawa Senators.
In franchise history, the Leafs are 12-16 in Game 7s.
“To get to where we want to get to, it’s not good enough,” Tavares said. “The team we’re playing against, and how hard they make it on you, the consistency that they play with, game to game, shift to shift. It’s disappointing, frustrating.”
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