SIMMONS: Leafs never have been on verge of winning anything during the Brendan Shanahan years
We are long past the point of patience with Leafs' playoff shortcomings
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Brendan Shanahan was on his fourth team and in his 10th National Hockey League season when he lifted the Stanley Cup for the very first time.
He won his second Cup in his 11th season, his third and final championship of a Hall of Fame playing career in his 15th year.
If anyone understands the virtue of patience in waiting for victory — and giving teams and players time to find their way — it is Shanahan.
The team he talked about building in Toronto, especially in his earlier years, was a team that he envisioned would contend during the season and be one of six or eight teams every spring to battle for the Stanley Cup.
His regular-season record, like those who play for him now, is impressive. His playoff record is nothing like what he had in mind for this apparently overly talented group.
He won his first Cup in his 10th season in the NHL, his first year with the Detroit Red Wings. His 10th season with the Maple Leafs concluded Saturday night in Boston. Another year of hope dashed in overtime, over before it had any real chance to succeed.
The sad reality over time is that the team Shanahan hoped to build, the one he envisioned, never has been a Stanley Cup contender. They’ve never been a factor beyond the first round of the playoffs. They’ve never looked, acted like or performed like, a team on the verge of winning anything.
So the narrative now has changed, even if Shanahan’s words have not. This was supposed to be a team that could win the Cup or certainly challenge for it. Over time, though, it’s morphed into a team — with his top players the same for the past eight seasons — that fights to try and get out of the first round of the playoffs.
The Leafs are not a Cup contender. They’re a contender to win the first round of the playoffs — and they’re 1-for-8 doing that in Shanahan’s time in Toronto.
The Leafs have been in the playoffs eight straight years under Shanahan and have been defeated eight straight years, seven of them coming in the first round. Those eight elimination games that ended series, not unlike the defeat to the Bruins on Saturday night, were similar in one way.
The Leafs managed just 11 goals in the eight games that would have pushed them to the next round of the playoffs. Eleven goals for a team that has Auston Matthews, the leading goal scorer in the NHL from the day he arrived in the league. Eleven goals for a team with Mitch Marner, a top-10 point-getter from the day he began playing in Toronto.
Of those eleven goals, two were scored by Patrick Marleau, which puts him one goal ahead of Matthews, two ahead of the God-like Marner — who hasn’t scored in a clinching game — and one behind William Nylander, who has been productive most playoff years.
It wasn’t only that the team didn’t score in those games lost. They got shut out by Columbus. They were held to one goal by a Montreal team that finished 18 points behind the Leafs in a shortened season, blowing their own 3-1 lead in the series. Those were teams the Leafs were supposed to handle.
The fact the Leafs battled back against Boston after trailing 3-1 in the series and played sharp enough defence to allow only three goals against in the final three games in regulation time in the series tells you something about the growing mettle this time around: Just not about their ability to make a big play when the lights are the brightest.
The team, as constructed by Shanahan, Lou Lamoriello, Kyle Dubas and now Brad Treliving, isn’t good enough and hasn’t been good enough at playoff time. That was obvious before this year. Certainly obvious now in reflection of another season gone by.
The challenge, though, is what to do to fix the problem. Does that start with replacing Shanahan or him presenting a plan of consequence to new MLSE CEO Keith Pelley. However it is sold, the execution of whatever might come next is significantly hampered by the current Leafs contracts and salary-cap limitations.
Matthews and Nylander, clearly the two best Leafs players, are signed long-term here for big money. That isn’t going to change. They’re not going anywhere.
Mitch Marner and captain John Tavares, two expensive pieces at a combined price of $22 million, enter the final year of their deals. Both have no-movement clauses in their overpaid contracts. Almost certainly, no matter who is in charge of the team, both players, will be asked — pushed, maybe — to see if they are willing to waive those arrangements.
And the odds are both will say no.
And the real trouble is no one would want Tavares at his current salary level and he would bring next to nothing in a deal.
Marner might bring some value if he agreed to a trade, but it would be limited compared to his worth because there is just one year left on his contract.
Which means, in essence, the Leafs are stuck with Marner and Tavares and the $22 million attached to them for another year, unless they an pull some kind of rabbit out of a hockey hat here.
Having Matthews, Nylander, Marner, Tavares and defenceman Morgan Rielly all signed through next season means the Leafs are hamstrung once again by their own over-exuberance in previous negotiations.
The team needs help in many areas, starting with a puck-moving defenceman or two, with a point man who can shoot the puck, with a third-line centre, with better goaltenders or those who can stay healthy, with more grit, always grit, and has almost no money to try and find that within the off-season.
A year from now, with Marner and Tavares’ contracts expiring, there is some daylight for a general manager in which to operate. The fans fancy — that Marner will waive his no-trade deal and be dealt for any number of great young players in hockey, as are rumoured online — is mostly fantasy. And if Treliving can pull that off in some way, well, there are awards for GMs who make the impossible possible.
Shanahan used to urge patience, as did his former GM Dubas, but the time for patience has passed. This Leafs team has proved to be more frustrating for Leafs Nation than the Maple Leafs teams that missed the playoffs 10 of 11 years after the lost season to lockout of 2005.
Back then, the Leafs were just pathetic. That we much understood. You are not pathetic when you have Matthews, Marner and Nylander up front, which is not that far off from the Red Wings once having Steve Yzerman, Sergei Fedorov and Shanahan up front.
That Detroit team played in three Cup finals, with three different goalies, won their three championships winning 12 of 13 Stanley Cup final games.
That team, in performance, with Nicklas Lidstrom on defence, with the legendary Scotty Bowman coaching, had an all-time feel about them and still does.
The Maple Leafs are known now as the team that almost won in Round 1. That came so close.
Not in Round 2. Not in any round beyond that. Not losing in the final or any final.
Sometimes a team comes out of nowhere the way the St. Louis Blues did in 2019 or the way the Los Angeles Kings did in 2012. Both teams missed the playoffs the year before winning their first Cup. The Washington Capitals won six rounds of playoffs in 10 years before they won their Cup in 2018.
There aren’t any teams like the Leafs out there. They have been the third-best team in hockey in an Shanahan era that began with gifts named Matthews, Marner and Nylander. Gifts that were covered in riches before they had earned them. And now what?
A coach fired, if that happens to Sheldon Keefe? A new team president or the old president with new words?
It still comes back to the history and the statistical shortcomings — 11 goals scored in eight elimination games. A high-powered, highly paid offence that can’t produce under pressure.
This is long past the point of patience. That only question that matters: What now for these consistently troubled and somewhat delusional Maple Leafs?
What now?
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