Last Place Leafs Looking For Answers

The Toronto Maple Leafs are not in a good place. The season is not over, the doom and gloom is not justified, but even the most sunny optimist has to admit that their 2025-26 regular season is at a crossroads. As was mentioned on the recent Leafs Convo, the club’s six-game road trip, which started with a weak effort in a 5-2 loss at Centre Bell in Montreal, could determine whether the club can stay within range in the Eastern Conference playoff race.

Toronto could not convert early in the game against the equally struggling Habs, and once Montreal took a 2-0 lead and the biggest bandwagon fans in the NHL got rolling, the Leafs seemed to crumble. The only reason the game remained competitive until the middle of the second period was the play of Joseph Woll, who faced 17 second-period shots before being mercy-pulled by head coach Craig Berube.   

“(Woll) was excellent, I pulled him (because) we were just giving freebies to them, I just said I had enough,” Berube said. “We’re down a goalie already.”

With the loss and Buffalo’s victory over Carolina on Sunday, the Leafs have fallen into last place in the Eastern Conference, but are four points out of the second wildcard and five points out of third place in the Atlantic. Closing both gaps is attainable, but the odds begin to get longer past American Thanksgiving, and will become near impossible if they continue to perform as they did against the Habs. 

The injury narrative is valid since the club is without two top liners (Auston Matthews, Matthew Knies), a depth center (Nicolas Roy), their top best righty blueliners (Chris Tanev and Brandon Carlo) and one of their tandem goalies (Anthony Stolarz). To make matters worse, the Leafs lost defenseman Jake McCabe after taking a puck to the face, but for once the club got some positive news on the injury front, as Berube said the defenseman would likely play in Columbus on Wednesday.

Here is where that narrative does not tell the complete picture. This team was playing like crap when all those players were healthy, so what exactly is the major malfunction here. Is it Berube and the fact that he has no answers, or that they have stopped listening to him? GM Brad Treliving does not believe so; otherwise, he would dispatch him in a red-hot minute in favor of someone like Peter DeBoer. 

If you looked at this team going into the season, it was realistic that it would take time for them to adjust post-Marner, that new additions would take time settling in, and would not produce the 90 to 100 points that Mitchy provided regularly, but that Roy or Dakota Joshua would put up some offense and more physicality, and that a return to form from Matias Maccelli would make up for #16 in the aggregate.  

Roy averaged 35 points over the last four seasons in Vegas, and currently, he is on a 16-point pace with Toronto. Joshua scored 18 goals two years ago with Vancouver, and although that may have been a career year, the Leafs likely were hoping for double figures and a requisite amount of sandpaper. Thus far, he is leading the club in hits (69), but has two goals in 22 games. Maccelli cannot seem to find a fit on any line, and has not been a zero offensively (nine points in 22 games), but is on a 36-point pace, when the hope was for him to get into the high 40’s or low 50’s. 

In the absence of Knies and Matthews, John Tavares has stepped up and been a leader on the ice, with six points (3 goals, 3 assists) in five games. William Nylander scored the game-winner against the Blues, but that wiped out the goal that he put into his own net earlier in the game and in a span when the club is looking for him to put them on his shoulders, he has been underwhelming. 

Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman on Monday’s 32 Thoughts podcast believes that the pressure is starting to creep into the Toronto dressing room, and that the uncertainty of the status of the club’s injured players is weighing on Berube. David Alter of the Hockey News reported on Monday that, besides McCabe’s positive news, Matthews, Knies, and Roy are close and will know more about their status after practice on Tuesday. Carlo and Stolarz were not on the ice, and the Leafs goalie is “a ways away”, Tanev was on the ice at Ford Performance Centre, but is not being rushed back after a pair of concussions less than two weeks apart.