from Dave Feschuk of the Toronto Star,

When the members of Toronto’s NHL brain trust were asked to account for the sixth straight first-round playoff ouster of the Shana-plan era last spring, the rationalizations were many.

Head coach Sheldon Keefe said with a straight face that he was heartened the Maple Leafs got more “respect” in the handshake line than they had been afforded in other post-season defeats. If coming up with new explanations for the same old results isn’t easy, Keefe, at least, got points for creativity, if not credibility. Team president Brendan Shanahan insisted he was encouraged to see his team play with “fight.” General manager Kyle Dubas, meanwhile, said he was pleased the team faced the reality of another abrupt exit with less “excuse-making” than in previous years. If the overdog Leafs have never been lovable losers, at least they’re accountable ones.

Amid the stay-the-course rhetoric, in which Dubas insisted they were “proud of the progress” even though they’ve yet to make any actual hay in the post-season, the GM also tossed in an eyebrow-raising claim about his team.

“It is still a young group,” the general manager claimed.

That, of course, was the go-to rationalization of perennial defeat in Leafsland for a long while. When the Leafs gave the Capitals a first-round scare back in 2017 — even when they lost to Boston in Game 7s in 2018 and 2019 — it was easy enough to play the age card and assume inevitable maturation. It was easy enough to make the case that the Leafs were an ascendant team with an unlimited ceiling, and that the pileup of first-round outs would add up to teaching moments for eventual triumph.

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