Pluses and minuses: Maple Leafs season in review

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Mitch Marner, slumped at the bench in the final seconds of the Maple Leafs’ season-ending 6-1 loss on Sunday, was quite the sight.

But for us, John Tavares’ woeful gaze to the heavens after Brad Marchand’s overtime winner in Game 3 was the defining image of 2024-25.

After a great regular season, beating Ottawa in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, and a glorious chance to put the Florida Panthers down 3-0 in the second round, Tavares and fellow long-suffering teammate Morgan Rielly were on the ice for the bad-bounce turning point in yet another missed playoff opportunity.

It was a picture worth 1,000 words, but here are a few more to wrap up the season.

FIVE NEGATIVES

POST-SEASON POSTER BOYS

Bad enough the Leafs haven’t got past the second round in the Core Four era, but the young guns of Shanaplan fame were noticeably absent when it counted.

Marner, Rielly, Auston Matthews and William Nylander were blanked and have totalled 10 points in six Game 7 defeats, hardly congeneric with their large salaries. We’ll take some injuries into consideration, but Tavares was also marginalized as space was reduced in the heavy-hitting series between two physical foes. That the five couldn’t pool their talents more consistently this and every spring, especially when able to out-score their problems in net and on defence in past regular seasons, was shocking.

TAKE IT FROM THE TOP

For most of the season, new coach Craig Berube ran a tight ship and achieved accountability from his players, a big part of his mandate.

But he also accepted blame when the Leafs slipped a bit while finishing off the Ottawa Senators and, for the first time this year, was at a loss for words Sunday at a home-ice collapse for the second time in five days. He couldn’t find a the right forward lines to compensate, while resisting the nuclear option of splitting Matthews and Marner as the series got away.

Berube got a raw look at what Sheldon Keefe was often up against at crunch time. The long-tenured leadership group — which remained intact ,other than Matthews and Tavares flipping the ‘C’ and the ‘A’ — is presented as the face of the team and can talk a good game. But the answers sound more stale each spring and there will have to be a shake-up if Marner and/or Tavares leave.

NO PAIN RELIEF

It just wouldn’t be a complete Leafs season without trying to work with an incomplete roster.

Injuries once more came at the worst possible junctures. The Leafs overcame an early absence of Matthews and he laboured at times throughout the season. With the year ended, he still hasn’t revealed what has been wrong, to end the rampant speculation.

Anthony Stolarz was likely concussed after a strong start in the Florida series and never returned while Matthew Knies gutted out the last two games with a lower body injury. Locker cleanout this week will reveal who else was hurting through the last weeks of the schedule and playoffs.

POWER OFF

Berube, and assistant Marc Savard, couldn’t quite get the power play humming at full efficiency through the season.

At its best, the five-forward unit was at a 24.8 per cent clip, tied for eighth in the league in the regular season. But they fell into old habits — moving the puck far too slowly in the playoffs and putting fewer pucks on net — a time when special teams make all the difference. Just as damaging, the top unit was susceptible to short-handed goals against.

CUPBOARD IS BARE AGAIN

For a contending team, there’s a risk with deadline trades, when inflated prices drain reserves.

General manager Brad Treliving sent a first-round draft pick next year and highly regarded second-rounder Fraser Minten to Boston for defenceman Brandon Carlo. Then it was 2027’s first-rounder to the Flyers for forward Scott Laughton. This year’s top selection was already sacrificed for Jake McCabe.

All of the new players at least have term and the Leafs were able to land Knies in the second round in 2021 , but it’s vital that forward Easton Cowan blossoms in the coming years.

FIVE POSITIVES

NET RESULTS

That lamenting you don’t hear is critics of the club’s goaltending depth. Whenever Joseph Woll was hurt, Stolarz was there and vice versa, right through the playoffs when even the team’s worst efforts could not be hung on the netminders. Both men won 20-plus games and kept their competition friendly.

FENCE-MENDING

A big part of the crease success was Treliving and Berube assembling a blue-line group that moved pucks effectively when not eating rubber.

Chris Tanev’s determined shot-blocking in tandem with McCabe’s made them the long-awaited shutdown specialists. Oliver Ekman-Larsson meshed with hard-hitting Simon Benoit, and Rielly, a misfit the past couple of years when it came to balancing his offence with spotty own-zone play, hit it off with Carlo.

KNIES GUY REWARDED

Assuming his next contract negotiations go smoothly, restricted free-agent winger Knies is a huge piece going forward with a re-defined core. He has the speed and size that should complement Matthews for years.

He hasn’t been coddled by the club like other young stars have been, and certainly doesn’t back down from aggressive opponents.

HIGHER STANDARDS

It shouldn’t take the Leafs a quarter-century to win another division title.

Though Florida could get another Stanley Cup, finishing ahead of the Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning sets a new path for Toronto, with the aim of annual home-ice advantage in the playoffs. The turf war in the Atlantic will intensify as Ottawa, Montreal and other clubs improve, but this year was an impressive showing, October through April.

CHIEF CONSTABLE

Berube likes things being done ‘direct’, as in getting pucks on net, which goes for his 1-on-1 dealings with players, too.

If there were any clashes, they stayed behind closed doors. Yet, Berube didn’t mind going public about getting Marner aboard in a series of summer meetings to know his roster better.

A man of fewer words than Keefe, Berube navigated the demanding media market in Toronto. Until a couple of playoff meltdowns by the team, he had no reason to call out his top people.

Lhornby@postmedia.com

X: @sunhornby