Are the Leafs about to miss out on the NHL playoffs for the first time since 2016? David Alter is worried but insists it could work in their favour.
Over the last nine seasons, the Toronto Maple Leafs has enjoyed a regular-season consistency like no other NHL team. They hold the NHL’s longest active playoff streak, having reached the postseason every year since 2017. Outside of the 2016-17 season, when the Leafs qualified as a wild card team, the question was always whether the Leafs could do anything in the playoffs, rather than just making it.
Now, that consistency is in serious question. The Leafs are mired in a five-game winless streak and a serious funk.
The Leafs have had early-season struggles before in this era, usually figuring things out before things slid too much. In 2019, the Leafs went on a six-game winless streak before firing head coach Mike Babcock. That led to the Leafs turning things around under Sheldon Keefe.
The difference between then and now is context: Babcock’s future had been in question since the start of Kyle Dubas’ GM tenure in 2018. Craig Berube’s job doesn’t appear to be in serious jeopardy yet, especially since current Toronto GM Brad Treliving hired him just 18 months ago.
Under Keefe, the Leafs always seemed to turn things around quickly. Although they struggled early in the 2021-22 season (starting 2-4-1 after their playoff upset against the Montreal Canadiens the previous spring), an overtime win against the Chicago Blackhawks stabilized their play. Similarly, in 2022-23, a four-game winless streak in Vegas and California left them 4-4-2, but they quickly returned to form. They followed the same pattern in 2023-24, stabilizing at 5-4-2 after a four-game skid at the end of October and into November.
Last season, the Leafs never had a winless streak longer than three games before winning the Atlantic Division.
This year is truly different. The Leafs have been sliding. The coach is new. The defense is the same.
The injuries have been somewhat devastating. They don’t have Mitch Marner, who, for all of his detractors, was and remains an elite regular season performer that isn’t easily replaced.
This is real adversity that the Leafs haven’t really seen before in this era.
And it could result in them missing the playoffs for the first time since 2016. Or it could be the urgent wake-up call that the franchise has needed over the last decade that finally gets them to play like a team and less like a club.
You can see this pattern of hitting rock bottom in all the Cup winners or even teams that go deep into the playoffs and reach a Stanley Cup Final.
There are deep issues that bring an element of doubt — doubt that either lets the team crumble or helps the club build a character that maybe doesn’t have back-to-back awful appearances in home playoff games against the eventual Stanley Cup Champions while getting booed off the ice.
The Leafs have had plausible excuses. Players have been hurt. Joseph Woll had been unavailable until making his triumphant return, albeit in a losing cause to the Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday. They left a lot of points on the table while playing a schedule full of teams that didn’t make the playoffs the year before.
But for some of the longstanding players on the team, they need this jolt of urgency from a results point of view. This is far more interesting than if the Leafs coasted in the regular season to a playoff spot. Every game should feel like the playoffs for this group now, and that’s good practice. It feels different, and it’s what they need.