‘We did a lot. And it wasn’t enough’

After falling just short against Lightning, Leafs left to ponder what went wrong

The Maple Leafs don’t lack for heart, they don’t lack for will, they sure as hell don’t lack for talent. I wouldn’t even say, because it can’t be empirically measured, that they lack that intangible thing called killer instinct.

So what is there to fix? Because a huge swath of Leafs Nation, justifiably bent out of shape over yet another playoffs that went seven-game pear-shaped, is clamouring for the brain trust to do something, damn it. But team president Brendan Shanahan and GM Kyle Dubas made it fairly clear in Tuesday’s post-mortem for the media that something is not in the cards. Nothing dramatic to shake up the constitution and the culture.

It’s the right decision, as unsatisfactory as stay calm and carry on may sound to a city pining for a Stanley Cup, well into a fifth decade of waiting, of being teased, of being tantalizingly close to … to … a climactic playoff quantum leap.

How, pray tell, do you shape-shift a Game 7 2-1 defeat to Tampa Bay — or a Game 6 overtime loss — that would retroactively have altered Toronto’s post-season fortunes and, front-facing next year, ensure a different outcome?

Yes, that’s what the franchise synod, high priests of the Leafs, gets paid for. And if the team had embarrassed itself against Tampa Bay, gone down stupidly, wilted under pressure, committed unspeakable blunders — a barrel of ’em, not the handful that directly impacted results — I’d be wielding a pitchfork, too.

This first-round series, however, pivoted on subtleties, on increments, on brief moments of inattention to detail, and the Lightning exploited those blink-blink lapses.

Or maybe I just don’t have it in me to kick the players when they’re so devastatingly down. And out.

Think you’re in despair — angry, aggrieved, gobsmacked? Imagine being them. However much it pains Leafs Nation, their hurt is greater.

On cleanout day at the Ford Performance Centre, amidst club exit interviews with the players, the losing was still raw, a little more than 48 hours removed from elimination in a springtime just about everyone had anticipated would stretch for miles.

“It’s an incredibly abrupt and difficult end to a season that we expected to be playing for much longer than this,” forward Jason Spezza said. “Just a really hard ending. You know that one of the two teams is going to lose the series but we didn’t expect it to be us.”

Spezza, Toronto-born and raised, will turn 39 in a couple of weeks. This was probably his last kick at hurrah; he is unlikely to be offered a new contract. Nor does he share in the totality of Toronto’s protracted playoffs dead end, just three years before the mast. But he is arguably the most insightful of the current Leafs. Let him tell it.

“Right now it’s more about reflecting, why we lost, what needs to happen. I don’t think anybody can stand here and say they definitively have an answer because if we did we would have tried to execute it and do it.

“We talked about lots of different things throughout the season, to push us and to keep us motivated and to keep focused on getting prepared to play playoff hockey. I think we showed we can play it. It’s just that extra little bit to win a series is going to take a little more than maybe most teams would, just because of the past.’’

A past that won’t be regurgitated here.

“Every year is a different group but every group will have to answer those questions until you break through. We felt like we were a different group. We were a more physical group. At times when there were dips in the season, we fought back. In games there were times where we, maybe in the past if we got down, we wouldn’t have come back. We came back.

“We need more from guys in key moments, we need more of just that stubbornness of not accepting to lose the game. It’s definitely in the room.

“A lot of things went right and it still led us to a loss. To me, the guys need to dig in and do even more. And that’s hard because we did a lot. And it wasn’t enough.”

The Leafs and the Lightning were two keenly equal teams, one of them two-time and defending champions, albeit with plenty scars of their own.

“I heard some of their guys say it was the toughest series they’ve had in their run of a couple of years,” Spezza said.

“But they found a way to beat us. We had moments where we could have grabbed it and maybe taken their will away. But they hung around and, because of that, we end up losing the series. There’s no doubt if we played 15 games it would probably have been decided in the last period.”

In the wake of a glittery tour de force season, personally, Auston Matthews was soft-spoken in his glumness. The best hockey player on the planet in 2021-22, and he’s homeward-bound in mid-May.

“In the end, it’s not the outcome we wanted. It sucks,” Matthews said. “It was a much different feeling throughout the series than in previous years, the effort and the pushback that we had. But ultimately we’re still going home not in a great place.”

There has been some perspective gained, however, from traumatizing Game 7s. “Maybe in previous Game 7s, we kind of went into the game a little bit hesitant, feeling it out. But I thought in this series we just went out there and played hard, there was no second-guessing. Maybe in previous years we kind of had one foot in and one foot out. This time we met it head on. Unfortunately, there has to be a team that’s on the losing side and we were on that side again. It hurts.”

“It’s still hard to understand because we were so close,” said William Nylander, who yet again found a second gear in the playoffs, “We’ve been in a lot of Game 7s where we came out on the wrong side and I think we’re slowly understanding the way we need to play.”

Morgan Rielly spoke of the belief the players still have in this group. “But obviously we haven’t proven that yet.”

And, from Jack Campbell, who will be a free agent this summer: “I just absolutely love being a Leaf.”

When the dismay subsides, he — all of them — will doubtless be loved again right back.