Top 3 Most Disappointing Toronto Maple Leafs During the Playoffs
The Toronto Maple Leafs lost another opening series and have yet win a playoff round since 2004.
The Toronto Maple Leafs may be legal drinking age by the time they actually win a playoff series.
It’s been 16 years since anyone has seen the Leafs advance past round one.
Every single year, especially for the past three, is the exact same.
Training camp is filled with optimism because the team has so much talent. They struggle midway through the season, don’t address it at the NHL Trade Deadline and follow it up by losing a series they probably should have won in the first round.
It’s incredibly disappointing having to watch this team year-after-year.
The highs aren’t even that high, compared to the lows.
The lows are a kick to the stomach and the highs are two seconds of joy, followed by “what bad thing is going to happen next?”
As Leafs fans, it’s a tease every season. Auston Matthews almost won the Maurice “Rocket” Richard trophy but they still couldn’t win one round?
Over the past two decades, a number of Big Four sports franchises with long title droughts have got the monkey off their back and won, but that can’t be said about Toronto.
The Leafs do what they do every year and give us hope, then let us down.
Here are three Toronto Maple Leafs players that were the most disappointing in five games against Columbus.
#3. Ilya Mikheyev
Better known as the “Soup-man”, Mikheyev was not good in five games against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
After ripping up training camp and being named the Phase 3 ‘MVP’, many expected Mikheyev to return where he left off. With eight goals in 39 games played before his injury, Soup was having a very productive season.
Starting on a line with John Tavares and Mitch Marner, it felt like Mikheyev was going to provide important secondary scoring.
However, that didn’t happen at all.
In five games played, Mikheyev had zero goals and zero points. He generated 10 shots on net but there wasn’t much urgency in his game. For whatever reason, he couldn’t get anything going at all.
Sheldon Keefe felt the same way because before you knew it, he was taken off Tavares’ wing and put on the third line.
In five games, there were only seven Toronto Maple Leafs that scored a goal, so it’s not like secondary scoring was coming from many other places, but at the same time, the Leafs needed Soup to provide.
If he was able to get just one greasy goal, the series could have been flipped and the Leafs may have won.
Instead, he showed Kyle Dubas and the rest of the Leafs front-office that maybe he’s not worth re-signing because if he’s going to play the same way he did this year in the next playoff series he’s in, it’s not worth the money.
#2. Mitch Marner
Even though he was tied for the team-lead in assists, Marner was pretty non-existent in five games against Columbus.
Marner is never expected to score as many goals and Nylander, Tavares and Matthews but just one would have been nice.
Finishing with four assists and zero goals in five games is not good enough for someone who makes close to $11 million per season.
Apparently Marner just fell. pic.twitter.com/CjB6oXGAl4
— Kevin Papetti (@KPapetti) August 10, 2020
Of those four assists, only one of them was a primary assist as well.
Marner needs to generate offense and be a force in the offensive zone, but instead he was pulling off plays like the one you can see in the tweet above.
If you watched every game, something felt off with Marner.
He wasn’t the same crafty player that we saw throughout the season and he just wasn’t able to do some of the great things he’s done against Columbus’ tight defense.
It’s not like the Leafs need to trade Marner or anything like that after five bad playoff games, but it’s need to be something that’s addressed to the player.
The Leafs can’t afford to have their most creative winger stopped like the way he was against Columbus because if that continues to happen, the team will never advance anywhere.
#1. Martin Marincin
I’m not sure if this is as disappointing as it is expected.
Marincin was the worst defenseman on the Toronto Maple Leafs by a mile. I know it’s unfair to criticize a player who in normal circumstances shouldn’t have been playing, but at the same time, you have to perform when your name gets called.
If Jake Muzzin never gets injured, Marincin never comes into the series, but that’s an excuse.
Marincin has played in more than enough NHL games to understand how to play the game, but instead he looked lost.
In the defensive zone, he was swinging his stick around trying to do something instead of using his huge 6-foot-5 frame to hit someone.
Not only that, but he was stuck in no-man’s land on the second Columbus goal in Game 5, which really put the game out of reach.
If Marincin is in better positioning, the Leafs have a real chance at completing the comeback. Although they never scored a goal in the game and you can’t win without scoring, the mindset would have been a lot clearer with a one-goal deficit instead of two.
The only positive that comes from the terrible play by Marincin is that the front-office should really understand that they have an issue with defense.
In the playoffs, you’re almost never going to win games 6-5. It’s a much tighter defensively-sound system, and until the Leafs understand that, they’re not going to be successful.
You can have all the talent in the world up-front, but without a defensive-core that’s going to stop bad goals from going in, you’re not going to advance very far.
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I never want to see Marincin play another hockey game and hope that this was the last game he’s ever played in the blue-and-white.