‘It’s a boost of confidence to have their confidence.’ Toronto Maple Leafs’ core embraces final chance at a deep playoff run

It’s almost tiring to just put yourself in the Toronto Maple Leafs’ skates. Could you find the energy to have the same conversation before the start of training camp, six years in a row? Field questions on what you learned about your first-round exit? Find the silver lining?

At the NHL Player Media Tour in Vegas last week, superstar center Auston Matthews and No. 1 defenseman Morgan Rielly mustered enough moxie to roll out of bed and do the dance with reporters. To their credit, they gave no exasperated sighs or sharp looks. They expressed about as much perspective as possible given they’d endured the same Round-1 heartbreak for six consecutive seasons.

The glass half-full guy? That’s Matthews, fresh off back to back Rocket Richard Trophies and having delivered the first 60-goal season of any player in a decade. He feels last spring’s seven-game loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning, in which Toronto held a 3-2 series lead and even a third-period lead in Game 6, was different than the previous five post-season defeats.

Matthews likes to play amateur hockey historian and compare the Leafs to franchises that went through similar tribulations before triumphing. A year ago, in this same setting, he pointed out how long it took Steve Yzerman and the Detroit Red Wings to break through in the 1990s and for the Washington Capitals of the Alex Ovechkin era to do so. Matthews sees even more recent examples of teams who took a while to win championships.

“It’s disappointing getting the same result over and over again, but I look at a team like Tampa or a team like Colorado, and it took them a really long time to win,” Matthews said. “They had to go through a lot. I think every team’s journey is different, so we’re writing our own story. We’re extremely motivated and all working toward the same goal.”

Do the parallels work? Only to an extent. The Lightning of the Jon Cooper era took a long time to lift the Cup, but they reached the Final in 2014-15 and lost in the 2015-16 and 2017-18 Eastern Conference Final to boot. The Avs? A closer comparison. Before they hoisted the chalice last season, they had yet to advance past the second round in the first eight seasons of the Nathan MacKinnon era. They had three total series wins to show for it.

Winding the clock further back, the 2018 Capitals had never even reached the Eastern Conference Final over Ovechkin’s first 13 seasons, but they at least won six playoff series over that span. The early-1990s Red Wings got embarrassed in the first round a couple times but reached the 1994-95 Stanley Cup Final and 1995-96 Western Conference Final before busting out to win back to back championships.

So while Matthews makes some fair comparisons, there is really no precedent for what the Leafs have done, or failed to do, over the past six seasons: winning zero playoff series despite being so dominant in the regular season that they have beaten their franchise records for wins and points twice in that span. In those six seasons of the Matthews/Mitch Marner era, the Leafs have NHL’s fifth-best record, trailing only the Lightning, Capitals, Boston Bruins and Pittsburgh Penguins.

So it’s forgivable that Rielly still leans glass-half empty on last year’s defeat now that he’s had a few months to reflect. If anything, coming so close on attempt No. 6 made things harder to accept.

“It honestly doesn’t really give you more pride or anything in relation to how you handle it emotionally,” Rielly said. “It’s almost worse because you’re right there. Upon reflection, it’s just sports. It makes you want to come back and win that much more. You can use it as a tool to motivate you and drive us through training. Losses like that are hopefully going to tee you up to be successful one day.”

The Maple Leafs’ regime is giving its core group another chance to be successful. At the season-ending presser in May, GM Kyle Dubas and president Brendan Shanahan were adamant that the team made real progress and expressed the intention to run it back with many of its same core players. Most of their offseason moves reflected that philosophy. Goaltender Jack Campbell and left winger Ilya Mikheyev priced themselves out of the market as UFAs, and the Leafs turned over several of their bottom-six forwards and depth defensemen, but the main group – Matthews, Marner, Rielly, John Tavares, T.J. Brodie, Jake Muzzin, Michael Bunting and so on – got another shot. And that meant a lot to the players.

“It’s a boost of confidence for us to have their confidence,” Rielly said. “There’s always changes, people come and go, but to keep guys together and give guys an opportunity to right the ship and change the script, I think that’s cool. It’s extremely motivating. This group has lost together and it truly does make you want to win together that much more. It’s a cliché, but you’ve got to go through certain things to be successful.”

Surely, though, this is the final chance for this core, which includes Dubas, who enters the final season of his contract. Even Matthews will be eligible to sign an extension starting next summer, so how this season plays out could shape his decision before he inks what will likely be the NHL’s new richest deal. There’s a lot on the line. Not even the Leafs brass will be able to sit tight – or feel confident in their own job security – if this team bombs out early again.

“I think so – I think every year the expectations are supposed to rise,” Rielly said. “I think for our group, that’s no different. Pressure from who, I don’t know. I think internally within the group, the expectation is greater.”

The Leafs might actually need the hype, the pressure, more this season than last, lest they get bogged down by boredom playing out yet another regular season in which they shouldn’t have too much trouble cresting 100 points. Matthews points out how much more competitive the Atlantic Division has become, with the Ottawa Senators and Detroit Red Wings among the bottom dwellers who improved the most. That means Toronto will play far more competitive games within its division this season, so perhaps iron sharpens iron and the Leafs reach the post-season feeling more battle tested.

The regular season will also give Toronto the 82 games of runway it will need to determine its playoff starting netminder. In one corner: Matt Murray, a two-time Stanley Cup champion whose career has been derailed by injuries and playing on a bad team in Ottawa. In the other: Ilya Samsonov, whose trajectory is oddly similar to Campbell’s before he came to Toronto as a former elite first-round prospect who has lost his way. Rielly is particularly excited to see what Murray’s experience adds to the team dynamic.

Ultimately: we can place (a) previous teams who took a while to win, (b) front office votes of confidence; (c) internal pressure; (d) a tougher division and (e) a new goaltending tandem under “whatever you need to motivate yourself.” Any team trying to avoid a seventh straight first-round exit likely wishes it could warp to the playoffs. Nothing the Leafs do between now and then will change public perception of them. But they’re doing the right thing by searching for whatever narratives will spur them through the regular season and into a high playoff seed.

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‘It’s a boost of confidence to have their confidence.’ Toronto Maple Leafs’ core embraces final chance at a deep playoff run

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