from Cathal Kelly of the Globe and Mail,

In Sunday’s deciding Game 5, the Leafs decided to live or die by their Big Three. A super-friends lineup of Auston Matthews, John Tavares and Mitch Marner provided many opportunities – a few of which you could have scored on – and not one was taken. Everyone else in blue stood around and watched them work.

Toronto lost the game 3-0 and the series 3-2.

On the one hand, this past week was exciting. On the other hand, the NHL doesn’t give out ribbons for exciting. This season is as much a failure as the last one, and the one before that, and the one before that. Except that each time you fail this way it gets a little worse.

Popular opinion of the Leafs will now split into two camps.

The first and loudest will maintain that the Leafs are the team we saw at the end of the comeback win. That it’s just a matter of harnessing that will to power on a regular basis.

That view will be pushed out hard by management because it’s the easiest one to handle. Believing it is just a matter of time is beneficial for the continued job prospects of all involved.

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from Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star,

So another year’s gone. The salary cap never stops, but you don’t have to break up this core, as tempting as some of it is. There is growth here. A full year under Keefe will help. This Cup chase isn’t over, not by a long shot. Dubas and Keefe have a lot of runway left. Next year is another chance.

But now the Leafs have a 12.5 per cent chance at another No. 1 pick, and Alexis Lafrenière, on Monday night. This series was the cumulation of everything that came before it, of a season wasted, and so the end wasn’t really a surprise, was it? Maybe it should have been, but it wasn’t. They didn’t get better enough, and that’s probably the toughest part of all.

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