What Went Wrong: High Payroll, Low Goal Count

The optimist in me wants to say, "Well...at least they won a series."

I was, and still am, very happy for the Toronto Maple Leafs for getting a 19-year-old monkey off their backs. They won a series. They ousted the Tampa Bay Lightning, a team who had made three straight appearances in the Stanley Cup Final, in just six games. Everyone figured that we would get Leafs vs Bruins in Round 2. A funny thing happened: the Bruins somehow lost to the Florida Panthers. So not only do the Leafs avoid the Bruins, they get to face the NHL equivalent of a #16 seed in March Madness.

I, being the overconfident prognosticator that I am, basically said "Leafs in three (Game Four would have been practice for the next round)." I buried the Bruins for losing to Florida. After all, Boston won 65 games, yet lost to a sputtering Panthers team. I said that a real team would sweep the Panthers. I said that Toronto would show Boston how it's done. Then the Leafs lost Game One. OK. Fine. "So it won't be a sweep," I thought. Leafs in five. Then...the Leafs lose Game Two. Oh boy. Now the Leafs had to go to Sunrise, and the best they could do is a 2-2 split heading back home. Game Three goes to overtime, Sam Reinhart scores, Leafs down 3-0.

It was at that moment that I start to ask myself, "Have I been underestimating the Panthers all this time?" The Leafs had to do what has only been done four times in NHL history: pull off a reverse sweep. They did take Game Four to earn a trip back home, but Game Five ended up going to OT. The Leafs killed off an overtime power play, but Nick Cousins decided that he was going to end it, and at the 15:32 mark of overtime, he did just that.

So how did this happen? I do have one guess. Well, actually, I have four.

In my story about the Leafs' playoff clinch, I mentioned the Maple Leafs' core: Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, John Tavares, and William Nylander. This has to be the most expensive core in the entire league. Matthews is getting $11.6M/year, Tavares (the captain) is getting paid $11M/year, Marner's getting $10.9/M, and Nylander's getting the smallest payday: $7M/year. Overall, that's $40.5 million combined between the quartet. You know how many goals they scored in this five game series? Three. Three goals. Even worse, the team's top star and highest paid player? No goals. In fact, out of Matthews' 11 points in this year's playoffs, only two came in this series.

The core didn't score any goals until Game Four, with Nylander getting them off the schnide. Nylander scored twice in this series, while Marner's only goal was the Game Four winner. This means that both of Toronto's highest paid players (Matthews and Tavares) didn't find the net in this series. In fact, Tavares (whose OT winner in Game Six against Tampa Bay ended the 19-year drought) only had one point in the series, and that didn't come until Game Five.

So here's how things stand now. Matthews and Nylander each have one more payday coming next year, and then they'll be UFAs the year after. Tavares and Marner have two more years of pay coming before they become UFAs. So the way I and some Maple Leafs fans see this, next year could be the team's last with that core intact, though I doubt they'll let Matthews go, don't know about Nylander. Again, there is one positive: the Leafs won a series. This group finally has that under their belt. They know how to win in the playoffs, and they know what they have to do to win in the playoffs. This will urge the Leafs to work harder to earn a longer run. I think we'll see that longer run next year, I have a good feeling about that.

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