The Toronto Maple Leafs find themselves in a position that has not been seen since before the start of Auston Matthews’ NHL career. It’s a spot that not many could have envisioned the team getting to less than a year after their deepest playoff run since 2002, even after seeing a noted 100-point player depart the organization the prior summer. Even the most pessimistic of fans probably did not foresee the team falling off from contention this quickly and this spectacularly.
Yet that is exactly where the Leafs are at – far removed from a playoff spot and set to miss the dance for the first time since 2016. Not only has this season gone off the rails in a manner that is difficult for fans to watch on a nightly basis, but it comes without the guarantee that all of the suffering will result in them drafting a cornerstone piece to help turn things around. This is a dire situation without easy answers, and it is entirely of the Leafs’ own volition.
There is a lot of blame to go around for how things have gotten to this point, and it’s not one person’s fault for why it has occured but a collective failure from top to bottom that should bear responsibility for a team that aspired to compete for the Stanley Cup to be all but out of the race before March.
GM Brad Treliving did not assemble a strong enough roster that could build off the success that occurred in 2024-25, even if a lot of it stemmed from luck. He has failed to address his reported needs on numerous occasions, which don’t get sorted out for months on end and end up being a point of contention when it comes to assessing where things inevitably go wrong. He whiffed on his bets that Matias Maccelli and Dakota Joshua would be able to rebound their games in a meaningful way to help offset the loss of Mitch Marner. At the time of filing, the last time Treliving completed a trade was on July 17, and no other additions have been made in the over seven months since then apart from a few waiver claims. The barren cupboard certainly made a trade trickier to pull off, but nothing was stopping him from getting creative with his targets and pulling off hockey trades.
Head coach Craig Berube, tactically, has been a mess and has not inspired confidence to make the necessary adjustments to get the best out of the players that he has. His system focuses on having less of the puck, spending more time in the defensive zone, relying on the goalies to make a flurry of saves, and hoping the offence can capitalize on their few chances. It is an ugly brand of hockey to watch on a nightly basis, especially when it is not working, which has been the case for much of the year. There have been countless pressers where he seemed like a man out of answers with how to fix what is ailing the team, as evidenced by his marginal lineup adjustments that barely move the needle. While Berube can’t account for the injuries that have affected the Leafs this year, a good coach makes do with what is available and makes the most of it, which can’t be said about the man running the Toronto bench.
Keith Pelley has to share some of the responsibility for his decision to entrust Treliving and Berube to run the show, given how poorly things have gone so far. But it’s also the smaller changes going on behind the scenes at Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment (MLSE), such as the lack of a replacement for team president after moving on from Brendan Shanahan and not having a head of sports science and performance. If Pelley was as committed to winning as he claims, he should have fired Treliving and Berube either in November when things started to go south or at the same time as Marc Savard around Christmas. The lack of vision and cost-cutting measures has backfired, and it is only going to get worse until MLSE is more proactive.
Their unclear vision has been evident in the lacklustre decisions that the Leafs have made over the past 12 months. It was a critical failure to have opted to stick with the same defensive corps as the season prior, with the only difference being them getting older and slower. Their lack of puck movement on the back end got exposed by the Florida Panthers in the second round, and that issue continues to affect them now, with the added issue of the Leafs allowing too many chances against off the rush. The Leafs made it known they would have liked to add a top-six forward to the mix, but did not address it either. Choosing to go with the struggling Cayden Primeau over the proven veteran James Reimer also proved to be a costly error, as Primeau was practically unusable and Anthony Stolarz was thus run into the ground before getting injured.
In regard to injuries, the Leafs decided to be secretive about the nature of such ailments and only provided vague descriptions such as ‘day-to-day, upper-body.’ While the mantra during the playoffs has been not to tip your hand if someone on the roster is fighting through something, this approach makes zero sense during the regular season and only makes people from the outside pissed off at the lack of information. It sends the wrong message to fans who simply want to know whether or not their favourite players will be available and when they can expect to return. Saying a player will be back in a few days and then they sit out for weeks only deepens the distrust people in this city have for this team right now.
Perhaps most infuriating has been the way they have, or more accurately, haven’t, used their young internal options either on the roster or with the Marlies. Easton Cowan’s rookie season has been a disaster from a developmental standpoint, as he has sat out weeks at a time despite the team insisting that having him around will be beneficial in the long-run. Jacob Quillan has been around for nothing more than a cup of coffee despite being in the midst of a solid AHL season and being more than capable of helping out this Leafs team. Dennis Hildeby played admirably when finally given a chance, and his reward was being reassigned to the Marlies as soon as the goalies got healthy. Even Marshall Rifai barely got a chance to showcase his abilities, quickly cast aside after just one game. Most damning is that players like William Villeneuve and Luke Haymes have not been given a shot to make an impression over the supposed regulars, despite showing plenty of promise.
None of this is to suggest that the mainstay players are exempt from criticism, as they are just as culpable for the mess the Leafs are in. Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Matthew Knies, and John Tavares are supposed to be the drivers of the offence, and they have not done that enough. The secondary pieces surrounding them – other than Nick Robertson, Bobby McMann, and Oliver Ekman-Larsson, have failed to make a meaningful contribution that would have helped ease some of the load. The goalies can only do so much when the defence in front of them makes it too easy on the opposition, but Stolarz and Joseph Woll could have done a lot better than what has been shown. They certainly aren’t on the same page with the coaching staff either, due to not wanting to play the system as they are told or because they simply can’t do it. It’s also fair to wonder if the team is tight-knit as they claim, given how Stolarz ripped into his teammates for not having his back when it came to protecting the crease.
All of which is to say that this is a collective failure from everyone in the Leafs organization that has resulted in them being in this dire situation. They are a team that is too afraid to make a mistake, so they wait until it is too obvious and are thus caught with their pants down. Their GM has not made a trade in months, their coach is questioning their players’ heart, and their CEO is making excuses for why this season has been a disaster. The play on the ice is uninspiring, the fans in the building are growing restless every night, and there seems to be no signs that things will turn around. Their first-round pick is in the hands of the Boston Bruins unless it’s a top-five pick, and the next time they have a first-round pick is in 2028. They are selling neither wins nor hope to the fans; they are selling apathy and failure.
The Leafs only have themselves to blame for the mess they are currently in, and only they can get themselves out of it.
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