SIMMONS: Why this Maple Leafs season should have been different

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The outrage and the disappointment is understood. This year wasn’t necessarily advertised as being different for the Maple Leafs.

But all you had to do is watch this team grow in a variety of ways to know what might have been possible this season — and some will say is still possible.

They have the right coach in Craig Berube. They have the right general manager in Brad Treliving. They had a team apparently built for the post-season unlike the long list of Leafs teams that have failed in the past.

Nowhere was it certain the Leafs could beat the Florida Panthers. They’re that good. They’re that mean. They’re that deep and challenging.

This was a mountain climb from the beginning and the Leafs got halfway there in the first two games of the series.

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And then they started gasping for air, either out of energy or out of food, the flag carried on the way to the summit no longer in their hands. This is why a best-of-seven series, a battle of attrition, determines the better teams in just about every playoff round.

It isn’t one game. It isn’t two games. It isn’t momentum. It’s survival. And it’s a battle to determine which team’s style eventually will take over the series. The Leafs won the first two games and led 3-1 in Game 3 in Florida. They held serve.

Since then, the Leafs have been outscored by the Panthers 11-1. The only Toronto goal coming in the final minute of that dreadful Game 5.

One meaningless goal in almost three games played: You can believe all you want about talent and performance and heart and being at your best when it matters most, but when you’re slapped around and one team has 11 goals and the other has one, the message is more than clear.

The script has flipped for the Maple Leafs — partly because of their own inability to react to the Panthers play; partly because they lost the goaltender they needed in the series, Anthony Stolarz, to a questionable hit; partly because the Maple Leafs two megastars have gone missing in action; partly because everybody you’ve never heard of or talked about on the Panthers — Niko Mikkola, Dmitry Kulikov, A.J. Greer, Jesper Boqvist, Uvis Balinskis and Jonah Gadjovich — have scored in the series.

Auston Matthews has not scored. Mitch Marner has one goal, which ties with him with Mikkola, Kulikov, Greer, Boqvist, Balinskis and Gadjovich in series goal scoring.

The Leafs have no goals from Bobby McMann (who I expected more from), Scott Laughton, Pontus Holmberg, Calle Jarnkrok, David Kampf, Steven Lorentz and just one combined from Matthews and Marner.

Why was this Leafs team supposed to be different? It begins with style of play.

Berube transformed the Leafs into a team capable on the forecheck, a team that dumped the puck in and followed up on the cycle, a team difficult to play against, with that north-south style taking care of the middle of the ice in both the defensive zone and the neutral zones.

Playing with the deepest and most willing six-man defence in blue and white in decades. Playing with a defensive structure that blocked more shots, took away more space, challenged the opponents offensively to find areas to create offence against them.

Teams around the NHL feared the Leafs for the manner in which they had transformed their play. But there was one things that had to happen for the Leafs to succeed in this series: Their best players, as always in playoffs, had to be their best players.

When the Edmonton Oilers season was on the line in Round 1 against Los Angeles, Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl rescued their Stanley Cup season. Mikko Rantanen has all but carried the Dallas Stars offence into the next round of the playoffs. Nathan MacKinnon had seven goals and 11 points in the seven games Colorado played against Dallas.

That’s what great players are supposed to do at this time of year. But as Treliving made moves to make the defence stronger and larger this year and he moved some pieces around with some forward spots, the Leafs found themselves back in a position they have known before.

They will only go as far as Matthews and Marner will take them. William Nylander has been a show this playoff season, almost like a solo act of sorts. He has produced offensive numbers and offence that hasn’t turned to numbers.

Matthews made a weak giveaway on the first goal Wednesday night. Marner gave the puck away and then quit defensively — and some consider him a great defensive player — on the Boqvist goal that made it 3-0.

That was it. Instead of scoring in Game 5, they got scored on. The best players made the worst mistakes.

In all that Treliving and Berube were charged with, in changing the roster, the style of play, the belief in winning, that has to start at the very top, with performance your highest-priced talent.

The former captain, John Tavares, has two goals in the series, both in one game. In the other four games, he has no goals, no assists and a constant look of frustration on his face.

This is a challenging time for Tavares and Marner, both pending free agents, the kind of players the Leafs would have wanted to retain had the playoffs not turned in such a quick manner. Now everything is off the table and all bets are off and there is no time to play with.

The Maple Leafs season could end Friday night in Sunrise and, with it, more hopes will be crushed, more jerseys will symbolically be thrown, more heads will be called for.

Last year is about to become this year. And that didn’t seem possible just four days ago.

ssimmons@postmedia.com

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