No. 1 Reason the Toronto Maple Leafs Will Win The Cup: Core-Four Forwards
Toronto still has one of the best top-six’s in all of hockey thanks to Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and John Tavares.
Fans like to yell at these forwards for not making enough of an impact in the playoffs, but last year they proved their worth, despite losing in Game 7 once again.
They were all basically point-per-game players and all contributed offensively.
They didn’t deliver in Game 7 though, which was the main reason they didn’t win the series, but I felt like they did enough in the other six games to give their team a chance at winning the series.
Not to mention that Tampa goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy had one of the best games of his career that night.
The team defense, goaltending and other players let them down, as it wasn’t the core-four’s fault.
If the combination of Matthews, Marner, Nylander and Tavares like playing together and want to do so beyond 2024, then this needs to be their biggest playoffs yet.
All four of those players have contracts expiring soon, so it’s possible that they all don’t play together as early as next season, so I’d expect them to have their best performance yet.