By Nick Lenahan
After three consecutive losses and blowing a 3-1 series lead over Montreal, Toronto failed to make it out of the first round for the 8th time since 2004. As a Buffalonian, I’ve seen nothing but jubilation on social media. But honestly, I just can’t help but sympathize. In my eyes, the Sabres’ rivalry with Toronto has been lost for years. The spite between the two has ultimately ceased and Toronto is just another struggling franchise with glimpses of the talent that equivocally bears no fruit in this decade.
Zach Hyman, Joe Thorton, Wayne Simmonds, Jason Spezza, Alex Galchenyuk, and Nick Foligno are all potential UFA’s this summer, and Leafs fans can only sit there and feel like their best window in years has been lost. The Jets/Maple Leafs regular-season series was 6-4 in favor of Toronto and absolutely should have been the Canadian division final matchup. Now Toronto’s UFAs are looking to sign elsewhere and you can’t help but think that a larger piece like Frederik Andersen would be on the move as well. It’s a tough situation because, well, what do they really need?
Forward depth is abundant, their goalies are sufficient with glimpses of above-average talent, and their defense has veteran leadership and versatility to the third pairing. All in all, I can’t believe Toronto missed the boat to the second round, but the pressure got inside their heads. After losing game five and watching their 3-1 lead diminish, Toronto had to be thinking, “We have time to close them out. Let’s play it cool.”
They did not play it cool.
Then the series gets tied and every hockey outlet starts to just pepper the statistics of past seasons and how Toronto just sees ghosts in Game 7. I honestly can’t believe they didn’t get shut out. Montreal is a good team. They clearly let Toronto deal with the head games and just played a complete game to round out the comeback.
All the pieces are there for Toronto though. As dumb as this might sound, they might need to rethink their strategy and fall back into a slightly more defensive style to help close out those important games. Toronto was electric from the neutral zone to the offensive end during the regular season, but if you can’t close out a series up 2 games, does it matter? They also need more production out of their 4 highest-paid players come playoff time. Granted, Tavares only played one game, but if $40.4 million was used for Marner, Matthews, Tavares, and Nylander and my lowest-paid player on that list (Nylander) almost doubled Matthews and Marner combined in points, I would “pick up the phone and start dialing” as Leonardo DiCaprio said in Wolf of Wall St. GM Kyle Dubas knows he has some of the most desirable players in the league sitting on his payroll. I expect a big name or two to be on the move.
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