Who stays and who goes if Toronto Maple Leafs’ season ends this week?

There’s no such thing as low-stakes hockey in Toronto. We all know that. To play for the Maple Leafs is like working on skyscraper construction in the 1920s: it’s a thrill, but every little mistake or miscalculation can mean death. Ask Aki Berg or Larry Murphy or Jake Gardiner about that.

It thus doesn’t always carry weight to call the Leafs’ next game a Big One. They’re all big ones. We know the routine in the playoffs: the doomsday clock shifts to 11:59:59 after every loss, and the parade route is mapped out and double-stamped after every victory.

But, no seriously, this next one, Game 5 at Boston’s TD Garden Tuesday night, is a Big One.

Yes, the Maple Leafs underwent some significant changes last summer. They switched general managers, overhauled their defense corps, let their key trade deadline rentals walk and molded their roster into something meaner and heavier. But the changes were ultimately cosmetic. They kept their core of superstar forwards intact, not to mention their No. 1 defenseman and their head coach.

But after watching the temperature rise, boos reigning down as Toronto feebly handed over Game 4 at home Saturday, things have changed. They trail 3-1 in their series with the Bruins. The Leafs haven’t conquered a 3-1 deficit since 1942. It feels like we’re truly witnessing the end of something. Unless Auston Matthews can move past his mysterious illness; unless Mitch Marner can find his inner dawg for more than half a period; unless one of Joseph Woll or Ilya Samsonov can be Jeremy Swayman’s equal in goal; unless coach Sheldon Keefe can find a way to make prudent lineup adjustments rather than head scratchers; this series will soon end. Whether that happens in Game 5 Tuesday or Game 6 Thursday or Game 7 Saturday, it will be a massive letdown. We’ll be eight seasons into the Matthews/Marner era, with a single playoff series win to show for it, the only time the franchise has advanced past Round 1 of the playoffs in 20 years. The concept of granting the group enough runway to figure things out will be long gone.

A few years back, I interviewed Matthews before the start of a season and asked him if it was difficult to get up for the 82-game grind knowing he and the Leafs would ultimately be judged by what they do in the playoffs. He responded by highlighting how long it took the Detroit Red Wings of the 1990s and the Washington Capitals of the salary-cap era to finally break through. Steve Yzerman and Alex Ovechkin were labelled superstars who couldn’t win in crunch time before doing it in their 30s. That’s true, but it’s also true that their teams overhauled so much around them. The Wings traded Keith Primeau, one of their foundational young players, and future Hall of Fame defenseman Paul Coffey to get Brendan Shanahan. They pushed out coach Bryan Murray for Scotty Bowman. They brought Stanley Cup winning goaltender Mike Vernon to town. The Capitals fired coach Bruce Boudreau (and Dale Hunter, and Adam Oates) and walked away from GM George McPhee, not to mention one of their best young players in Alexander Semin, on the road to building their championship team.

Both those franchises won championships with a lot of their homegrown pieces still around, but it wasn’t a steady climb with the same group earning chances over and over. The Leafs must be prepared to blow things up similarly – in every section of their org chart.

Who stays and who goes if Toronto’s season ends this week?

Core Players

Matthews and William Nylander, coming off the best statistical regular seasons of their careers, are safe. Their eight-year extensions kick in next season at a combined $24.75 million cap hit. Captain John Tavares’ $11 million AAV has obviously taken on water with each passing season, but it expires next summer. Buying out the deal would only save you a little more than $600,000 on the cap next year. He likely wouldn’t want to waive his no-movement clause for a trade, either, given he specifically signed in Toronto as a homecoming. While he likely remains for 2024-25, there isn’t necessarily any rush to extend Tavares. If he continues to decline next season, he’d be more likely to sign a cheaper, team-friendly deal to stay.

While Morgan Rielly will never be a true, alpha, all-situations No. 1 defenseman, he improved defensively this season and ultimately hasn’t been the source of Toronto’s problems. He was excellent for much of the 2022-23 playoffs. At $7.5 million, his AAV is hardly an albatross given what he brings offensively. It doesn’t feel like he’s an urgent piece to move.

Which brings us, of course, to Marner, who carries a $10.903 million AAV through the end of next season and is eligible to sign an extension as soon as July 1. Given his camp’s willingness to play hardball, we’d have to expect a contract demand with an AAV north of Nylander’s $11.5 million mark. Marner is a two-time first-team All-Star and Selke Trophy finalist. Only six NHL players have more points over the past five seasons. The regular-season sample size will win out and make him even richer than he already is.

But the burning question is whether he earns that top coin as a Leaf – or elsewhere. Marner’s talent is undeniable, and it’s possible his flat, jittery performance this postseason is the result of lingering effects from the high ankle sprain he suffered in March. But if you’re trying to claim playoff Marner is the same as regular season Marner, you’re lying to yourself. There’s a stark difference in his point production. He’s muscled off the puck too easily and too often. He appears to get the yips when trying to make plays in an environment with far less time and space than the regular season one.

General manager Brad Treliving, then, will have to consider whether Marner, who would carry enormous trade value, is a piece to sacrifice in hopes of reconstructing the roster. If you put a player of Marner’s ilk on the block, there’s no telling what you could get in return, be it a No. 1 defenseman, a power forward or both.

Would there be a risk to trading Marner? Or course. There’s even a precedent for Treliving botching this kind of trade, as the Florida Panthers steamrolled him on the Matthew Tkachuk deal two years ago. But there are key differences in the situations. Tkachuk wanted out of Calgary and forced Treliving’s hand, reducing his leverage. Also, the Leafs are eight playoff runs into Marner’s tenure. At this point, what would they have to lose by making a wholesale change and trying something different?

Coach

Keefe all but hammered the last nail into his Toronto coaching coffin when, following one of the Leafs’ more embarrassing home playoff defeats in years, he claimed he saw “nothing wrong” with the team’s effort level. Whether he couldn’t acknowledge the problem or couldn’t see it, either line of thinking is worrisome from your bench boss in that scenario. Keefe’s regular-season record is undeniably great, but he has repeatedly struggled to outcoach his opponents in the postseason, often waiting to make key lineup changes until it’s too late and/or making strange choices when he does, such as placing all-finesse left winger Nick Robertson on the checking line in Game 4. Keefe already got his stay of execution last year. Paying out his extension won’t be a problem for MLSE now that previous head coach Mike Babcock’s contract is off the books. Keefe’s fate is quite obviously sealed if Toronto doesn’t rally to win this series in seven games.

President

The franchise cleanout could extend to the very top. It hardly felt like a coincidence when, in January, MLSE named Keith Pelley its new president and CEO. The former head of Rogers Media and TSN is Toronto born and bred, known for holding incredibly high standards, and won’t settle for mediocrity. For perhaps the first time since he was hired 10 years ago, Leafs president Shanahan, who is believed to make $7 million per season, could be staring down the guillotine. Ownership sided with him over Kyle Dubas in last summer’s him-or-me scenario, and the franchise has taken a step back on the ice. Shanahan has reached the point where he almost has too much history with this core group. Is it time for a fresh leader with no pre-existing loyalty to the personnel?

Potential Change of Scenery Guys

Robertson. Defenseman Timothy Liljegren. Both came up carrying top prospect status, both mastered the AHL to the point they had little left to prove there, both have shown flashes at the NHL level and both have struggled to maintain their coach’s trust. The moment(s) have looked too big for them at times in the playoffs. Their talent remains apparent, and they both could end up flourishing elsewhere, perhaps on teams lower in the standings who would entrust them with larger roles. They also both happen to be restricted free agents. Will Treliving keep them around as part of the solution or cash them out while they still carry trade value?

The Unrestricted Free Agents

The bottom of the roster will likely churn, sure. We may see deadline rentals Joel Edmundson and Ilya Lyubushkin go. Treliving already let blueliner T.J. Brodie walk as a UFA when they were in Calgary together, and we can expect the same this summer. Same goes for disastrous signing John Klingberg, who can exit Robidas Island July 1. Mark Giordano, 40, is out of gas, healthy scratched and a near-lock to retire and perhaps transition into some type of front-office role, Jason Spezza style. The Leafs will have decisions to make on scrappy scoring forwards Tyler Bertuzzi and Max Domi, who gradually found their grooves over the course of the season, with Domi seeming to enjoy the Toronto media pressure cooker more than most. Whatever changes happen with the UFAs, they will be relatively superficial, nothing we haven’t seen before in the Matthews/Marner era.

Goaltender Ilya Samsonov’s days were numbered the second he and the Leafs went to arbitration last summer. He’s been too much of a roller coaster for the Leafs to bring back, especially entering a summer when a surprising number of higher-end goalies could be on the market, from free agents like Laurent Brossoit to trade candidates like Jacob Markstrom and Juuse Saros.
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Whatever happens this offseason, it’s almost certain to feel very different from any other summer in the Shana-plan era. The Leafs could undergo a total identity change unless they pull out a seven-game miracle this week.

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