There was once hope. A feeling of finally getting to root for a team that is looking forward and actually putting a wholehearted effort into building a team from the ground up and seeing where they can go from there.
They get some skilled forward from Sweden to drop in their laps in 2014, a hometown kid from the London Knights in 2015, and then of course, in 2016 they get the can't-miss center that will one day be one of the best players in the league. Oh, and then they go and sign the former first-overall pick that helped shape a franchise but wanted to play for his hometown team. It was all wrapping up to be a perfect foundation of players to then push the rest of the team forward.
All they needed was to keep some established players around, maybe add a few veterans, figure out who is going to be playing in between the pipes, and then that's a perennial contender. It all felt so simple and the Toronto Maple Leafs were on the path to make it so.
Almost a decade later, and a couple playoff series wins are the only time we have celebrated something meaningful. And that first round victory we all just experienced felt like a previously thought fore-gone conclusion that went sideways and was quickly rescued in the end. Not a real big time for celebration.
And now we sit here. Waiting for what feels like an inevitable series loss. A sinking gut-rattling feeling after the entire Leafs team fell flat on their stomachs, as cold as the ice beneath them. Game 5 was sports misery concentrated.
The second Mitch Marner messed up so bad that he might have lost an entire game and an entire series, the page turned over. Any conversation about attempting to run it back with a roster build around the same core of the lineup was made impossible. One single mistake that put the final nail in the coffin of this version of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Now, we are already focusing on what's next. With the feeling of an inevitable playoff exit in the coming days, questions about certain personnel will start to arise. Marner is all but gone and will be an unrestricted free agent on July 1. John Tavares might follow him there, might re-sign before he hits the open market, or there might be a lengthy conversation about his role on next season's team and try to get him even cheaper than previously thought.
The one saving grace is that Auston Matthews and William Nylander will be here. Sure, Matthews is dealing with some sort of injury that has zapped the capability of putting the puck in the back of the net from his entire game, but he's still a Selke finalist who scored 69 goals last season. And Nylander might be the only consistent player of the bunch.
Looking even further, it's just a jumbled mess of lost potential. Matthew Knies will most likely scoop up some of the cap available to the team after they don't re-sign Marner. And the blue line will stay in-tact -- they're not the problem whatsoever.
But after that? After that skill, they could rebuild the entire bottom six and probably should -- but again, that's a different article. Now, the team is moving in a completely new direction led by a different-looking group of players.
Maybe they dip their toes in the free agent market to get one of the bigger names to try to supplement the offense (again, they probably should do that). Or approach a team about a trade to maybe do the exact same thing. No matter what, this team is going to look different next season and it might not even just be on the ice.
Could we see a change in the front office? Brad Treliving might be a little bit more on the safe side, but is some team with an executive vacancy like the New York Islanders going to come crawling up to the front door of Scotiabank Arena and ask Brendan Shanahan if he feels like taking over on Long Island? Something is going to happen to shake the foundation of this organization and maybe they do need to rattle up the not-so-old cobwebs.
We're entering a new era filled with more unknowns than before. Less certainty than the security blanket of the core of this team leading the Leafs to a decent regular season and then a playoff full of expectation but inevitable and early defeat. Maybe it will end up as growth. Or maybe, it will be the shedding of a rotten era as the Leafs head into obscurity, beginning the first steps of leaking the talent they thought they had.