It's okay that the Toronto Maple Leafs players are saying "we'll be back and stronger than ever" but it's a scary thought if management feels the same way.
Nothing is guaranteed in professional sports, so it's not a crazy thing to believe that the Leafs have gone from Atlantic Division winners to basement dwellers. Just look at the Buffalo Sabres for example from a positive perspective. Nobody would have ever seen them near the top of the Eastern Conference standings this year, but here we are, as anything can happen in sports.
Regardless of the franchise, nobody makes the playoffs every year. Even the Kansas City Chiefs, who went to three straight Super Bowls missed the NFL postseason last year. They were looked at as the unstoppable force in football, but all of a sudden lost control of the season due to multiple injuries and one-score losses.
The NHL has also seen multiple examples of this with the Tampa Bay Lightning and Boston Bruins. Since 2014, the Lightning have been to four Stanley Cup Finals, but they also had a down-year missing the postseason in 2017. Steven Stamkos had an injury-plauged season which cost them mutliple wins and the team narrowly missed the playoffs with 94 points that year.
As for the Bruins, they were playoff-bound every year before hitting a rough patch in 2024-25. However, instead of gaining a few draft picks, they were able to acquire real prospects who were NHL ready in 2025-26 and had a foundational core in all three facets of the game built around David Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy and Jeremy Swayman.
The one issue with the Leafs though is that they're not the Lightning or Bruins. Both of those franchises have made mutliple Stanley Cup Finals over the past 15 years, while the Leafs haven't sniffed a Conference Finals apperance since early 2000s, or worse haven't been a championship since 1967.
Auston Matthews and William Nylander are great players, but are they warriors like Nikita Kucherov, Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, Victor Hedman or Andrei Vasilevskiy? I don't think so, which is why this quote from Matthews scares me.
Leafs should not bet on being back stronger than ever
"I remember the Lightning missed the playoffs one year and then the next year they're back at the top of the division, competing. A team like Boston that had a down year and the same thing, like, they're in the mix (this season). You know, sometimes it happens," Matthews said via TSN.
Yes, Auston, sometimes it does happen. But this isn't just bad luck and injuries. Sure, you look to Chris Tanev's or Anthony Stolarz's injuries as big losses, but those two players can't be the difference-maker in making in the playoffs. Instead, the blame needs to be put directly on the captain's shoulders and he needs to tell everyone that this is happening because he didn't play better.
Matthews needs to take full responsibility for this team falling apart because he hasn't scored a goal in 11 games and the team is an 18-wheeler falling off a cliff. If Max Domi and Matias Maccelli are still going to be in the top-six next year, while Morgan Rielly is going to be a top-pairing defenseman, then "sometimes" is going to happen again next year, and the year after.
It's okay that the players think this is a fluke but management better take a serious look at this roster and change everything because if everyone thinks this is just bad luck, we're in for a serious amount of pain.