'I love these guys': Maple Leafs mourn possible end of an era after Game 5 elimination

TORONTO – “It’s tough to describe in the moment.”

How was Morgan Rielly supposed to feel? He genuinely didn’t know. He’d never been in this situation before as an NHLer.

Does it constitute progress if you lose…differently? And with greater spirit?

Those were possible questions hanging over the Toronto Maple Leafs as they staggered off the ice following their season-ending overtime defeat to the Florida Panthers Friday. What, exactly, did this season represent in the end? How will their performance on their way out be remembered?

For 55 minutes and 33 seconds, Friday’s Game 5 didn’t look like anything fresh. It was actually unfolding like a classic session of Leafs Elimination Game Karaoke. They were playing all the old favorites.

There was the inexplicably flat and hesitant start at home from a team trailing 3-1 in the series, waiting a split second too long to put every puck on net, overpassing on the power play.

There were the deflating first-period goals goaltender Joseph Woll probably should have stopped in an elimination game, a trickler through his arm on an Aaron Ekblad shot followed by a bad-angle one-timer from Carter Verhaeghe, turning the building morgue-quiet as the Leafs fell behind 2-0.

Next was the attempted comeback with the Leafs waking up in the second period, simplifying their game the way they successfully did in Game 4, throwing pucks from all angles at Sergei Bobrovsky and narrowing the margin to 2-1 on a seeing-eye point shot from Rielly.

The most popular track of any karaoke night: a controversial call that jaded Leaf fans are doomed to lament all summer. A mad dash to the net from Rielly, appearing to tuck the puck inside the Panthers goal line, but ruled no-goal on account of the play being already blown dead, turning the crowd into a raging chorus of boos and garbage-tossing to rival last year’s karaoke night, which featured the blown Game 7 interference call on Justin Holl negating John Tavares’ tying goal.

With four minutes and change left on the clock in Friday’s Game 5, however, William Nylander reminded us that we couldn’t paint the 2022-23 Toronto Maple Leafs with the exact same brush as we did the teams that suffered opening-round playoff defeats six consecutive times from 2017 through 2022. These Leafs won three road overtime games. They tied Game 3 against the Tampa Bay Lightning with a minute to go and rallied from 4-1 deficit in the third period of Game 4. They won that series to end a 19-year drought. And in Game 5, Nylander roofed a puck over Bobrovsky’s left shoulder from an awkward short-side angle for the tying goal. The Leafs showed actual pushback in a clutch moment, and it wasn’t the first time in this postseason. They willed Game 5 into a nail-biting overtime.

So, in a literal sense, this season represented progress no matter how things ended for Toronto against the Panthers. But when that end did come after Nick Cousins cleverly hesitated before slipping a shot through Woll at 15:32 of overtime, it ended Toronto’s season with a sense of, to quote coach Sheldon Keefe, “missed opportunity.” During a season in which the first-place Boston Bruins, defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche and mini-dynasty Lightning were all golfing by the end of Round 1, the playoff field was as wide open as any in recent memory.

“I believe we had a team good enough to win the Stanley Cup and we didn’t do that,” Keefe said. “But there are eight teams left playing in the second round here, and all eight go into it with the belief that they can win the Stanley Cup, and seven of them are going to be disappointed. We’re one of those teams that is disappointed.”

So the sting isn’t quite the same as what we saw from the Leafs who choked away first-round series leads in 2021 and 2022 and were visibly tearing up with grief in the aftermath. But the pain was still evident — because this Leafs team was close to doing something memorable. The Leafs led Game 2 of the series 2-0 before squandering their lead in a bizarre 47-second sequence to start the second period. They dropped Games 3 and 5 in overtime. They were competitive despite getting zero goals from superstar Auston Matthews and captain John Tavares across five games in the series. It was there for the taking, but the Panthers imposed their will more often than not with their physicality and had the Leafs blueliners, particularly Timothy Liljegren and Justin Holl in Game 5, backing up passively in their own zone too often. Both were on the ice with that same shrinking posture on Cousins’ winning goal.

So how should the Leafs feel after this type of defeat? So many members of this core have never been this far in the playoffs. And they didn’t yet have the words to process what everything meant.

But what everyone in the dressing room after Game 5 knew was that things are about to change, no matter what. Key rentals Ryan O’Reilly, Luke Schenn and Noel Acciari are among the team’s noteworthy unrestricted free agents, as are agitating left winger Michael Bunting and injured goaltender Ilya Samsonov. General manager Kyle Dubas has no contract for 2023-24. Nylander and Matthews enter the final seasons of their deals. So while the Leafs were still in shock over the defeat in the minutes after Game 5, the sense of mourning was present. For Rielly, there was the emotion of not wanting to say goodbye to a group that has endured a lot together over the past seven seasons.

“We’re proud of our season, things we were able to do over the course of it,” he said. “I love these guys. I don’t want anything to change.”

For right winger Mitch Marner, the immediate reaction was more one of denial, pointing out that, on paper, the group remains together until they learn otherwise.

“I mean, we’ve all get years left on our contracts,” he said. “It’s not up to us, but we’ve got a lot of belief in this group, a lot of belief in that core. It sucks right now, but we have belief.”

As close to each other as the core players have become since the current era of postseason contention began in 2016-17, the net result is a single playoff series win in seven seasons — including a 7-17 playoff record at home. After the leadership duo of Dubas and president Brendan Shanahan committed to running it back last offseason, the same approach won’t do this time. One of the more turbulent offseasons in Leaf history looms, even if the team as we know it wishes it could have infinite chances at glory.

Belief isn’t enough. Eventually, a perennially dominant regular-season team must deliver more than a single series win. The Maple Leafs as currently constructed will soon rest in peace.