A Postmortem of the Leafs 2019-2020 Season

This year has been a wild one so far what with the COVID-19 pandemic upending our lives and creating a singular focus for the world to fight against. Consequently, sports were put on hold indefinitely as was the dread that tends to accompany the last few weeks of the regular season for the Maple Leafs.

It was by no means guaranteed that the Leafs were going to make it to the post-season at all, and had all the traditional signs of a nail-biting finish that involved watching other teams' results in the standings as much as watching the Leafs’ performance (or lack thereof). In the 2018-2019 season they finished with 100 regular season points. Such a result would have been mildly amazing this year considering they finished the shortened season with 81 points after 70 games. This is an unimpressive result for a team that management would suggest had all its pieces in place, particularly after hard bargaining by its stars and the firing of former coach Mike Babcock, replaced by Sheldon Keefe.

Incidentally, this set the stage for a best-of-five series with Columbus, who shared the exact same games played and points stats as Toronto, but were absolutely stunning under coach John Tortorella last year as they swept the heavily-favoured Tampa Bay Lightning in a best-of-seven series, ultimately losing the following round to Boston.

Yet all of the pieces being in place doesn't make a bit of difference if the pieces don't want to play. Much has been said over the past 24 hours about the battle between skill and will, and while the Maple Leafs are certainly loaded with talent, they often fail to deliver on that and pass it off with a shrug. For a team that has been crafted to be as offense focused as possible, losing 3 of 5 to a defensive team and being completely blanked on 2 out of those 3 games just isn't good enough.

John Tavares seemed to have the answers, suggesting that they were close -- "about an inch or so" -- from getting a goal and making it a game worth actually watching. But again, that's just not good enough. People have been locked inside for months perfecting parlour tricks ranging from balancing acts and acrobatics to trick shots and musical skills, and I'm pretty sure that one of them could have found a way to throw a puck into an open net from a couple of metres out. That, and John Tavares has 11 million reasons to not make excuses. I believe the line he was looking for is "I should have had that one." Plus like most sports, hockey can be a game of inches. The edge of a stick, the tip of a skate, it all matters, and that is often the difference between winners and losers.

It's not just the abysmal performance that was last night's so-called hockey game, during which point Columbus got a second goal over Toronto during a line change that would have been called a disaster if it happened in the regular season, let alone a knock-out game in the playoffs. It's not even the fact that they played as if this was their third game in as many nights and they didn’t actually have to worry about being unceremoniously dumped from the postseason in the first round (again) if they didn't manage to get a goal, or two, or three.

It's the fact that nobody in this franchise, from the top to the bottom, gives a single damn about culpability. No one is stepping up to say they should have done more, or that they screwed up, or that they're sorry. The Maple Leafs are as nonchalant about failing miserably as they ever have been, and as it stands that may never change.

Soon, the NHL draft lottery will take place, with Alexis Lafrenière being the top prize. Even being in this lottery is a consolation prize for the Leafs, and one they barely deserve. If they happen to win it and pick him, I hope they do not consider this to be a victory of sorts. But likely they will, and little attention will be paid to the fact that this house of cards that General Manager Kyle Dubas has put together was always too unbalanced to stand. What needs to change doesn't have to do with coaching or talent. It has to do with culture. And the culture of the Toronto Maple Leafs has long been far too toxic to succeed in this league, where competition and spirit can take a team much farther than a flowchart or an Excel spreadsheet can.

Whether the team wins the top pick overall is irrelevant at this point. Dubas got all of the players he wanted, and his proof of concept fell flat. For all of those negotiations and calculations, the truth is all the team managed to do was make it to a 24-team expanded playoffs, by not being one of the worst seven teams in the league. That's not good enough and at this point the whole organization should know that, and perhaps even try admitting to it.