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Sad News For Maple Leafs: Their Key Player Is No More Due To………

Sad News For Maple Leafs: Their Key Player Is No More Due To.........

TORONTO, ON - APRIL 24: Auston Matthews #34 of the Toronto Maple Leafs waits on a face off against the Boston Bruins during the first period in Game Three of the First Round of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Scotiabank Arena on April 24, 2024 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. (Photo by Mark Blinch/NHLI via Getty Images)

The Leafs are 3-10 in elimination games since 2019. Two of those wins came last spring — one a Game 6 victory that closed out the Tampa Bay Lightning and launched the team into the second round for the first time since 2004, the other a 2-1 Game 4 win over the Florida Panthers that staved off a sweep and a second-round loss that would come two days later.

This has not been a big-game team historically, a team that rises to the moment.

Up 3-2 in the series over Boston in 2019, the Leafs lost 4-2 in Game 6 at home and then were flattened 5-1 by the Bruins in Game 7.

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It took a miraculous third-period comeback and OT winner from Matthews for the Leafs to avoid a loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets in Game 4 of the 2020 play-in round. Two days later, they were shut out by Columbus in Game 5.

The path looked set for the Leafs to march deep into the postseason in 2021. A 3-1 series lead over the Montreal Canadiens evaporated in no time with OT losses in Games 5 and 6 and a flat performance in a Game 7 loss at home.

The Leafs scored their first and only goal that night with less than two minutes left in the third period.

In 2022, the Leafs had two chances to close out the Lightning and couldn’t do it. They scored once in Game 7.

Again and again, it’s been the stars at the very core of the team who haven’t come through when it matters most. It’s been true through four games of this series, albeit with some asterisks.

Matthews played maybe his best playoff game as a Leaf in Game 2. A goal, two primary assists, eight shots, six hits and wins on 70 percent of his faceoffs. Then he got sick and his performance, not surprisingly, dipped. Matthews went without a point in Games 3 and 4 and posted a total of four shots.’

According to Keefe, he was pulled from Game 4 after two periods by team doctors.

“For whatever reason, it’s not one of those everyday types of illnesses that sort of come and go,” Keefe said a day later. “This one has lingered and the effects have lingered and gotten worse when he’s on the ice asserting himself.”

The Leafs, meanwhile, have been asking Tavares and Marner to go head-to-head with David Pastrnak and the Boston top line. And while they’ve succeeded in slowing that group down, they’ve not been able to generate anything of consequence offensively, aside from Marner setting up Matthew Knies for a goal in Game 3

Marner has two points in the series. Tavares has one, the lone power-play goal the Leafs have scored.

Nylander, meanwhile, was absent for Games 1-3 for reasons that neither he nor the team have clarified. He looked like someone racing to catch up to the pace and intensity of playoff hockey in Game 4. He had five of his eight shot attempts blocked.

“He looked to me like a guy that’s definitely adjusting to the series and what’s required in the series to be able to have success,” Keefe said. “Some of the things that he was looking to do aren’t available.”

And while a comeback seems unlikely now, it also seemed unlikely for the Panthers against the Bruins in just this spot last spring — down 3-1 heading into Game 5. Florida won that game in overtime, won a wild Game 6 with seven goals and then won Game 7, again in OT.

For the Leafs, any kind of comeback may have to start with the power play, which has just the one goal on 14 opportunities in four games and seems to be a central focus for Keefe heading into Game 5.

Can Keefe and Guy Boucher, who runs the power play, come up with anything new to shake this group from a funk that’s been ongoing now for months? It seems like forever ago now, but this is a team that scored on 50 percent of its power plays in February — 14 for 28, with eight goals combined by Matthews and Nylander.

What’s interesting about that stretch? The Leafs were varying the personnel on their No. 1 unit from night to night.

Sometimes it was Rielly quarterbacking things from the top. Other times it was Timothy Liljegren. Tavares was briefly dropped from PP1 for Tyler Bertuzzi. Is there a look in that mix that the Leafs can go back to? (The more I’ve thought, the more I wonder if the Leafs should split up the stars as the Bruins did ahead of the postseason, with Matthews and Nylander on one unit and Marner and Tavares on another. The No. 1 unit feels stale. A split might freshen things up and create some competition. It’s just late, on the verge of elimination, to make that change.)

They could increase David Kämpf’s role in this series and have him try to do the thing he once did to pretty good effect (with better help): Get stuffed in the defensive zone and make it out anyway. But if they play Kämpf more, they’re playing someone who won’t help the cause one bit offensively.

Then again, maybe the tradeoff is worth it if it frees Tavares’ line (whoever is on it) up for more offence.

The Leafs with the best chance of scoring on any given night: Matthews, Nylander, and then Tavares or Marner.

There has to be more opportunity, better opportunity created, for two of those guys to come through. The coaching staff can engineer it with their lineup and deployment

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