TORONTO — During Mitch Marner’s final shift as a Toronto Maple Leaf, which went on way too long, the fans of the hockey team he grew up loving booed when his blade touched the puck.
Exhausted by a hopeless 6-on-5 shift that dragged on for 106 seconds and beaten down by a Jumbotron blaring the same score, 6-1, that triggered the first sleepless night of a recurring nightmare, Marner gave up the puck and glided to the Scotiabank Arena home bench for the last time on Sunday.
But first those magical edges of his had to dodge another replica sweater that had been chucked on the ice in the middle of action. Those blades had to glide through a brown patch of exploded beer that had been launched in disgust before the superstar took a seat on a bench that had been targeted by the same overpriced domestic product.
For president Brendan Shanahan.
It ends with an ugly, tragic, torture theatre observers of this strange, stubborn and supremely talented sporting experiment will swear they saw coming, yet still find hard to grasp as truth and not some sick joke.
After Toronto’s core squandered a 2-0 series lead to the Florida Panthers and no-showed in Game 5, they found a pulse and fed their fans one more spoonful of hope in an all-hands-on-deck Game 6. Open up and say ahhh.
Then they yanked the rug all over again. Another 6-1 loss on the chewed-up, Molson-sloshed home ice they fought so hard to earn over 82 games, this loss tying the largest margin of defeat by any home team in a Game 7 ever.
It ends with gallows-humour “Let’s go Blue Jays!” chants from a sold-out-but-filing-out crow.
It ends with thousand-mile, multi-million-dollar stares.
And it ends with a literally spitting-mad Marner instructing his teammates to “Wake the (expletive) up!”
The words of a man who registered a combined total of three shots over his final five games as a Leaf, who went minus-5 over the Panthers’ four wins, and who will soon receive the type of raise that makes him one of the most handsomely paid athletes in the sport.
But not here. Not in this town.
Especially not after what has transpired over the past week.
The hurt is too deep. The trust went poof.
Turns out, Springfield didn’t need that monorail after all.
“I mean, I’m feeling the same way. It’s sad. It’s heartbreaking,” Marner said, after hugging some staff and teammates behind closed doors. “We’re not happy with that outcome either.”
And while Marner didn’t say he’d be raising his newborn son Miles somewhere far away from the failure and vitriol, the pending unrestricted free agent gave no indication post-game that he wants to keep giving ’er the ol’ college try.
Asked what being a Leaf has meant to him, Marner spoke in the past tense.
“Everything,” he began. “Took maybe a risky pick on a small kid from Toronto and been forever grateful to be able to wear this Maple Leaf and be a part of some of the great legends here. So, never taken a day for granted and always loved it.”
Tonight, after Marner’s deepest playoff run (seven wins) culminated in another Game 7 defeat, love is tempered.
“Sadness, obviously. Depression,” Marner said. “Pretty devastated with what just happened.”
Imagine a world where a supremely gifted and unique talent gets chosen by his favourite boyhood team, routinely hits or nears 100 points, always makes the playoffs, and even gets nominated for a Selke, he’s so good defensively.
Surely, that kid would be beloved by the whole town. They’d want him to re-sign, and he’d want that too.
Now imagine if that kid and his fellow stars — Auston Matthews, John Tavares, William Nylander and Morgan Rielly — dig in and fetch top dollar at the negotiating table and, with the inflexible faith of a president who doesn’t know when to walk away from a bad bet, win only two post-season series in nine years. Nine.
They go 0-for-6 in Game 7s and 0-for-7 in winner-take-all postseason games.
Well, in that case, not even Matthews was willing to use the word yes when asked if he hopes Marner returns in 2025-26: “He’s like a brother to me and to all of us. I think we’re a very tight knit group, and we obviously love him to death. That’s all I can really say about that.”
All the captain could say about Sunday’s scene?
“I don’t know how it really got away on us. Just not on the same page,” said Matthews, who tried pointing to a good 10 minutes in Period 1. “I just thought we had too many passengers throughout the rest of the game and weren’t on the same page.”
Outside of his star turn in Game 6, Matthews was frequently one of those passengers himself.
“I can’t explain right now, nor do I want to, (Games) 5 and 7 at home. That’s obviously things that we got to look at and talk about as an organization,” coach Craig Berube said. “For me, it’s all between the ears. It’s a mindset. These guys are capable of doing it.”
Not together at least. Not anymore. Not when it matters.
“I don’t think it’s because people don’t care. I think it’s … I don’t know what exactly. But I just don’t think we had our best stuff in the most important game of the season. That’s unacceptable,” Rielly said.
Also wrong. It has been acceptable.
Under Shanahan, Leafs management has accepted all of this core’s crunch-time shrivelling and rewarded it with raises and trade protection.
And now that same front office will watch the best asset in the summer of 2025 walk for zero return.
That Berube formed a line centred by Matthews and flanked by pending UFAs Marner and Tavares in Period 3 was like reading the last stanza of a tragic poem.
“They were the better team tonight. They were the more desperate team tonight. They were the more aggressive team,” Berube said. “You got to have a level of desperation, determination. And I didn’t feel we had it.”
Please don’t get us twisted.
The Panthers are a fantastic team; they deserve credit here. Toronto’s stars are incredibly skilled; they may well get their rings one day, like Phil Kessel and Nazem Kadri did. Berube and GM Brad Treliving did a heckuva job improving the defence and implementing a more playoff-suitable game plan; they should be safe.
But the scars for the five longest-serving Leafs cannot be healed, and the track record of the president who refused to break up the band is too tainted.
The milk had already spoiled, and they served it to us anyway.
“If you look at the heat this team catches, it’s actually really unfortunate,” said Brad Marchand, the oldest and best player in the series. “They’ve been working at building something really big here for a while, and they were a different brand of hockey this year.
“They’re getting crucified, and I don’t think it’s justified. Just because they weren’t able to do it. I mean, we’re a really good, deep team too, you know? And that’s how things go sometimes.”
Sometimes. Not nine times.
Remember: the Leafs’ best players were all healthy and in their prime. They weren’t undone by a blueline afraid to block shots or a goalie who couldn’t stop a beachball.
“What’s great for the league is hard for the Toronto Maple Leafs and their players. The passion for the Toronto Maple, the scrutiny these men are under is why everybody else gets paid so much. It’s a driver. There’s a cost to it — for them. There’s a challenge. Yeah, you can hit one out of the park here, and then you’re never buying lunch for the rest of your life, right?” said Paul Maurice, who coached here once, before winning elsewhere.
“But there’s a cost for these guys, for their families. When you lose a game like this, it’s going to be rough on them. You go through a whole bunch of things that aren’t wrong — but they’re wrong because they lost.
“This is a much better team than we played two years ago. Much better. It’s a much better team than we played 23 years ago in the conference final (when Maurice coached the Carolina Hurricanes). This team is in that group of teams — like ours — where there’s 11 this year. Then there’s eight. They have a chance. That’s one of those teams. So, you’re going to assign a whole bunch of character flaws just aren’t true.”
What’s true is the compositional flaw in Toronto’s roster, its culture, its mindset. And the folly in having the hubris to believe those flaws didn’t exist in the face of annual evidence.
So, Mitch Marner, do you still believe in this core? Do you want another shot?
“We’ll see what happens,” Marner replied.
Ironically, the team given nine lives got clawed to death by the Cats.
Which leads us to the only logical conclusion: Run it back!
• Tavares spent seven years with the Maple Leafs. Over the course of that contract, he scored 222 goals and racked up 493 points in the regular season. He added another 31 playoff points, including a series-clinching goal.
As full value as he was during that run, he’s never seen Round 3.
Unlike Marner, Tavares said unequivocally “yes” he wants to re-sign. There’s no guarantee.
“It’s meant everything to me,” the former captain said. “It was big decision I made seven years ago, and I’ve loved it. It’s been amazing for myself and my family. So, just accept responsibility we haven’t been able to come through and play well enough to get to where you want to get to.
“Never gonna quit. Never gonna stop trying.”
• An incredible performance by Florida deadline pickup Seth Jones, who was at his wit’s end in Chicago prior to the trade deadline.
The defenceman logged a game-high 23:42, put up a goal and an assist, had a debateable goal wiped off the board due to goalie interference, and ripped more shots on goal (four) than any Leaf.
But it was Jones’s heads-up play to avoid offside on the Jonah Gadjovich goal that was most impressive:
• Marchand improves to 5-0 in playoff series against the Maple Leafs. All five of those went to Game 7.
Marchand scored a goal, added two assists and was fantastic in his 13th(!) Game 7. He became the first player in NHL history to defeat one franchise in at least five winner-take-all games.
The 37-year-old Marchand led all skaters with eight points in seven games. The man is a bona fide Leaf killer.
“The thing about Toronto is, their fans are very in-your-face. So they’re really aggressive, and they let you hear it all the time, and it’s just fun to interact,” Marchand said, beginning a post-win soliloquy. “I interact with a lot of fans, and I enjoy that part of it.
“We’re living a dream that a lot of us never thought would never really become reality. And, yeah, it’s a job, and it’s tough, and there’s expectations from the media, from the players, from the staff, the ownership, the fans. But there’s moments that you need to enjoy. Like, careers fly by, you know? I’ve been in a long time, and I’ve been very fortunate, and it’s almost over, right? And, like, I can’t believe how fast it’s gone by. I wish I was able to enjoy more moments and actually look back and take back moments that I took for granted. I wish I could have them over, but you don’t get that opportunity.
“I grew up a Leafs fan. I enjoy playing against the Leafs, and I enjoy interacting with fans. It’s fun. It’s not something I’ll forever get to do, and I don’t take myself too seriously. I love getting made fun of; I love making fun of people. And if you can’t take it, then so be it. But I can. So, I’m gonna enjoy the moments that I have.”
Marchand now has the second-most playoff points against the Leafs in league history, trailing only Gordie Howe.
• Another Leafs Game 7, another goalie surprise.
Anthony Stolarz backing up Woll was a stunner.
The goalie did not participate in the team’s morning skate, nor have a stall in the Leafs dressing room Sunday morning.
Until warmup, he had not practised with his teammates since going to the hospital midway through Game 1. Meanwhile, Matt Murray and Dennis Hildeby had been taking NHL shots throughout series.
A Hail Mary emotional boost perhaps?
• A couple of famous fans got let down.
Justin Bieber and wife Hailey sat so close to the home bench, they would’ve made the Savvy Meter video breakdowns — had the pop star returned to his seat before Max Domi scored early in Period 3.
And Drake placed a $1-million bet on his home team. The team from his beloved Six peaked in Game 6, unfortunately.
