After years of playoff struggles, the Toronto Maple Leafs finally won a playoff series, but any good will that they built from that brief success is all but gone. Everything was aligning perfectly — they didn’t even need to go through the best regular-season team in the Boston Bruins in the second round — but instead the Florida Panthers have given them a rude awakening. Now they face an 0-3 series deficit.
While a comeback is possible, it doesn’t seem likely, especially with the lack of killer instinct from this core group of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, John Tavares and William Nylander, which was highlighted in Game 3. Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk brought on David Alter to "Daily Faceoff Live" to talk about the Leafs’ lack of a killer instinct and what mindset the players and the staff have to have.
David Alter: I don’t know. Every year, it just seems like you’d think that the Leafs are not capable of actually disappointing after these milestones, that there’s room for incremental improvement. Then you come across a situation where you lose three games; you’re not putting in your best effort. Even the last round, they advanced, but they won three overtime games on the road to do it. They continued to claim that their best hockey has not been played yet, and when it hasn’t showed up and you don’t have that instinct, I think you have to look at yourselves in the mirror.
The core guys have constantly had to answer this question, and every year, it looks like they’re on the precipice of doing that — and then for whatever reason, they don’t get the job done. And then I look at previous years and exit interviews with media and everything like that, it just doesn’t seem like the group is pissed off enough about what’s taking place. They push the right message of “staying positive” because the series isn’t over, and that’s true. But I think what the fan base, and I think what some people want to see from the outside, even if they do show it on the inside, is that they give a you-know-what about what’s going on, and when you listen to them talk after the game, it just sounds like they don’t really.
I don’t know. If this ends the way we think it might end, then I think the rope for excuses is over. You finally have to change something major. I don’t know if it’s necessarily the GM and head coach; I think you might have to look at personnel and do what Florida did. They had that difficult question, and they changed the makeup of their team after finishing with the best record in the regular season. Right now, that’s proving to be a brilliant move.
You can watch the full episode here…
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