SIMMONS: It's time for the Maple Leafs' Core Four stars to shine in the post-season

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Mitch Marner finally hit the 100-point mark. Nobody on the Ottawa Senators scored more than 80.
William Nylander scored 45 goals this season with the Maple Leafs. Nobody on the Senators hit the 30-goal mark.

The Maple Leafs’ top centres, Auston Matthews and John Tavares, ended the season with 71 goals and 152 points. The Senators’ top two centres, Tim Stutzle and Dylan Cozens, came in at 40 goals and 126 points — 31 goals and 26 points fewer.

So it should almost be easy, right? This playoff series between the nine-year Maple Leafs and the Johnny-come-lately Senators?

The Leafs have the better players. They have the better record. They have the playoff template that first-year coach Craig Berube has been pushing all season long.

But it won’t be easy in any way, not with Brady Tkachuk doing the Sam Bennett thing to the Leafs and with Ottawa’s speed and offensive contribution from its back end.

That is, unless the Core Four — Marner, Matthews, Nylander and Tavares, two of them pending free agents — do what they have never done before in Toronto.

The great divide of this matchup with the Senators is the top-end talent of the Leafs. It couldn’t be utilized all that well last year against Boston because of mystery ailments that forced both forced Nylander and Matthews to miss a combined five games.

Now everybody is as healthy as you’re supposed to be at this time of the year. The big guys need to be the big guys for the Leafs. The big guys need to do what they haven’t done before.

One year Nylander seems OK in the playoffs, one year it’s Matthews and in another it’s Marner — but never together, not at the same time, not in any commanding way. For all of the money the Leafs have spent on high-end talent, this group of four has been a colossal failure through eight playoff runs collectively.

They know that, even if they don’t admit it. They know that, deep down, if they are honest with themselves. They know this is their time — this has to be their time — and they are well aware of so many losses, such as the Game 7 defeat last year to the Bruins, in which they didn’t come through offensively.

They scored one goal against Boston. They scored 10 goals in a five-game series loss to Florida in 2023. In elimination games from 2017-22, the Leafs went 0-6 against Tampa Bay, Montreal, Columbus, Boston (twice) and Washington and scored eight goals in six games.

The first playoff season for the The Big Three (Tavares wasn’t here yet) ended with back-to-back 2-1 overtime losses to the Capitals. The young guns came up empty to start and have continued on that playoff path ever since.

This is now Year 9 for Marner, Matthews and Nylander in the playoffs and in the NHL. The opportunities lost along the way have been many.

But this is the first time the Leafs have finished first in the Atlantic and play a wild-card team in the playoffs. And this Year 9 comes after eight years of playoff difficulties and all of the thoughts that surround the problems.

The question remains — as it seems to every year: Are these four men built for the post-season? Can they excel when it matters most? Can they do what the best players on contending teams have to do in order to move on?

Claude Giroux is one of the veteran leaders on this hungry Senators team. He has been through the playoff wars before. He went to the Stanley Cup final with the Philadelphia Flyers in 2010. He scored 50 playoff points in 44 games over three strong years in Philadelphia.

Marner, on the other hand, has 50 playoff points in nine years.

“We can’t be weighted down by the past,” Leafs GM Brad Treliving said. “We’re not going to be focused on what’s happened before. We’re focused on today.

“I know Auston’s stats are down over the course of the season and, to be honest, I don’t care how many goals he’s scored or hasn’t scored. I’ve never seen his game at the level it is right now as a 200-foot competitive game.

“It’s the same with Willie. It’s the same with Mitch. You look at John’s game and where it is. You look at where Morgan Rielly’s game has been the last six weeks. I’ve got great confidence in the people.”
This is the best-equipped Leafs team in the nine playoff years under Brendan Shahanan. They’re stronger and deeper in goal. They have a shutdown pair on defence with Chris Tanev and Jake McCabe, assuming the latter is healthy. They haven’t had that before.

They have Brandon Carlo, a big veteran playoff defender, on their second defence pair. They have depth, speed and size on left wing with Matthew Knies and Bobby McMann as they’ve never had before.

This is a team you can believe in — but you stop in the same place we always seem to stop.

You stop at Marner, Matthews, Nylander and Tavares and ask: Can they do what we’ve seen Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl do, what Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point do, what Sasha Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk managed last year?

The best players have to be the best players, this series is on them.

Once again. As it has been for each of the past nine seasons.

ssimmons@postmedia.com

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