Why can’t the Leafs’ biggest stars perform in the playoffs?

The Toronto Maple Leafs faltered in their biggest game of the current era on Wednesday night and find themselves on the brink of elimination against the Florida Panthers in Game 6. 

In a 6-1 loss to the Panthers on home ice in Game 5, the Leafs “Core Four” of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and John Tavares once again struggled to deliver in high-pressure moments. 

Against the Panthers, the four have combined for just five goals, with none coming in critical situations in Game 4 or Game 5. Matthews has yet to score in the second round series. 

On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff Live, Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli dove into the issues with Toronto’s superstars.

Yaremchuk: You can sit there and talk about the players over nine straight years, and whatever. 

You go from the hard ass in Mike Babcock, to the players coach or whatever you want to call him in Sheldon Keefe, and then you’re back to the hard ass with Craig Berube. At some point, you are who you are.

 I think you can look at Matthews, and you can look at Marner, and I know Leafs fans love to point at defensive metrics and all this, but every other team’s star players find a way to play good defensively and produce in the Stanley Cup Playoffs at some point.

This isn’t a team that’s flaming out in the third round or has a Stanley Cup Final performance to point to – they have nothing to point to, and it’s been almost a decade! I know this series isn’t over yet, so we shouldn’t be burying them totally, but again, after nine years of a sample size, there is zero reason to think they can come back in this series. 

Seravalli: What would be the thing you could point to to give you a reason to think they can come back? Here’s a stat for you – Auston Matthews, he’s now played against the Florida Panthers twice in the second round, zero goals. Nick Robertson now has more goals in the second round in his career than Auston Matthews. 

Mitch Marner, too, you want to go through the whole thing, from the turnover, the lack of hustle and compete, to looking at his Game 5 through Game 7 in a series [over his career], 18 games played, zero goals, six assists. How is that possible? Not a single goal, not one time you didn’t get one that bounced in off of someone’s ass. Let’s be real, this team is, at this point in time, one of the biggest singular collections of disappointments when it comes to the postseason that we’ve ever seen when it comes to superstar talent.

Yaremchuk: I think there’s a very real chance that’s the last time we’ve seen Mitch Marner on the ice in Toronto in a Maple Leafs jersey. With the effort on that one goal, he sealed that up. 

Seravalli: Yeah, I would think so.

You can catch the rest of the Maple Leafs segment and Thursday’s entire episode here…