TORONTO — Five nights ago, it was all new eras and unsung heroes and finding a way. As the Toronto Maple Leafs took a 3-0 chokehold over this first-round bout with the rival Ottawa Senators, Craig Berube spoke of weathering storms. He spoke of watching his team withstand the pressure, and do all the little things right.
Two games on, the storm’s started breaking through, the roof’s begun to leak, and the Maple Leafs’ post-season hopes seem at risk of getting rained out yet again.
But after watching it all fall apart in a Game 5 stumble that saw the Senators shut out the home side and pull this thing back to the nation’s capital, Berube’s message to his group was simple.
“Stick with it,” he said late Tuesday night after the final buzzer sounded on a 4-0 Sens victory. “We’re up 3-2 in the series. You know, it’s playoff hockey — there’s a lot of ups and downs. We need composure.”
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Chris Tanev, one of this group’s most unshakeable veterans — and one of the key reasons for the revived blue-and-white hope in 2025 — echoed the sentiment. The chaos has arrived after an early three-game stretch of calm, but that’s simply the nature of playoff hockey — this part is the part where the winners are made.
“Throughout each period, each game, each series, there’s tons of momentum swings and shifts,” the defender said Tuesday. “Usually, whoever deals with those the best will win periods, win games and win series.”
If Toronto is to win this series, it may take more than simply sticking with it. There’s the matter of raising it, too, of finding a higher gear, of matching the progress and improvement that’s been found by the squad on the other side of the ice over the past two games. And if Tuesday night is any indication, the Maple Leafs’ top six is a worthy place to start.
The six-man group hasn’t been bad, not by a mile. They haven’t cost this team wins. By and large, until this night, Toronto’s offensive engines have done what they’ve needed to, stacking respectable totals, controlling play, and thriving defensively. But look across the league at the other marquee names dotted throughout the post-season’s eight series, and you see more than respectable — you see all-world talent dragging teams forward, through the muck, to the promised land.
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On Tuesday night, Toronto’s top-line trio seemed to go the other way, looking out of sorts from the jump, unable to string together the type of sequences that have become signature.
“Not enough speed through the neutral zone with that line,” Berube said of Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and Matthew Knies, after taking a moment to mull their Game 5 performance. “And creating things in the offensive zone off that. They were just a little bit late on things and didn’t create enough stoppages in the offensive zone. You know, it was one-and-done too much for me with that line tonight in the offensive zone.”
The captain conceded the point.
“You know, we started well. We had chances. I thought just the execution at times wasn’t there,” Matthews said of his club’s attack Tuesday. “ I thought at stretches throughout the game, we could’ve done a better job of getting more guys to the net and making it a little bit tougher on (Linus Ullmark). But he made some key saves when he had to.
“This time of year, it’s greasy goals, it’s not the prettiest of things, so that’s the way we’ve got to approach it.”
There were chances. The trio combined for 11 of Toronto’s 29 shots in Game 5, Knies leading the way with six himself. But it was the nature of the chances that’s at issue — it was the passes just a few feet ahead, a few feet behind; the shots that flew just over the bar; the sense that they were simply out of sync, off-beat. Go back through the past four games, and there have been glimpses — each of the three has potted one goal at even-strength off a top-line link-up — but it’s largely been their connections on the man-advantage that have driven Toronto’s offence.
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The second line has had its own issues. John Tavares and William Nylander have similarly looked dangerous on the power play — but at five-on-five, the meaningful chances, and the sequences finished off, have been more rare. Tuesday night saw Berube finally begin tinkering with the line — after starting the series with Pontus Holmberg as their third mate, and with Bobby McMann having suited up there for a spell during the regular season, Berube gave both Max Domi and Calle Jarnkrok spins with Nos. 91 and 88 at different points in Game 5.
“Just trying to create some offence in the third period, that’s all,” the coach said of the change-ups. “Nothing else.”
The fifth game of this series laid bare the potential issues that have been brewing, holes that have been papered over by power-play success featuring the same cast of characters. On this night, the man-advantage success dried up too, and the Maple Leafs’ offence finished with a goose egg — while giving up a back-breaking short-handed goal for the second game in a row.
The path to getting goals back on the board — and finding the fourth and final win in this series — might require more than just shuffling bodies around the lineup sheet though, Berube said. It’s the offensive approach as a whole that needs to shift.
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“I thought that they had it jammed up with five guys right in front of the crease the whole night, in the slot area — I thought we forced too many things in there,” the coach explained. “You know, we could have went low-to-high, got a little bit of movement. Our D have got to shoot pucks from the top when they can, and the forwards’ job is to get in front of the goalie.
“But we killed a lot of our opportunities … (when) we gained the back of the net. We had time, we came out, and we tried to force it into the crease area too much, and killed our momentum by doing that. We’ve got to get in front of Ullmark obviously. We’ve got to get shots through from the point, we’ve got to get traffic, and find some second and third opportunities around the net.”
The Maple Leafs have one more crack at this thing before it all starts to close in on them. For all the talk of being in a good spot, of knowing the fourth game is the hardest to claim, the history of this core can only be waved away for so long. After one chance to close this out, sure; after two, perhaps.
But a fall from grace that carries them all the way to another first-round Game 7 will cue the five-alarm fire among the fanbase. It would bring the playoff ghosts right to the windows, would firmly plant that seed of doubt that’s been hovering precariously above the soil.
For their part, Berube’s Leafs are focused on following the same message their coach has been hammering home since Game 1 of this series, on doing the same thing they’ve done all year — riding out the storm.
“Everybody’s fine in here,” said Matthews from the locker room late Tuesday night. “The playoffs, it’s a roller coaster — it’s going to be ups and downs. It’s about staying as even-keeled as you possibly can, making adjustments when you need to.
“And just about everybody digging in, looking in the mirror, and just being a little bit better next game.”
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