Ex-Toronto Maple Leafs defender Giordano gets honest about issue that plagued team in playoffs
The Toronto Maple Leafs are a little over two weeks away from starting their run in the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs.
After making his TV analyst debut on the network’s trade deadline panel last month, former Leafs defender Mark Giordano made an appearance yesterday on TSN 1050 to talk about the team he spent parts of three seasons playing for.
With Giordano on the roster, the team finally broke through their first-round series drought in 2023. But the Leafs fell in five games to the Florida Panthers that year in the second round, en route to the latter making a run to the Stanley Cup Final. Amazingly, the Leafs scored exactly two goals in every game, with Giordano highlighting Florida goalie Sergei Bobrovsky as the key factor behind the team’s scoring drying up.
“When we played Florida in the second round, and we lost in five games, it felt way worse than it was because this guy, we couldn’t score on this guy. He made timely saves. And at the start of that game [Wednesday], I was like, ‘Oh my God, he’s got it back again… There he is!'” Giordano said about Toronto’s eventual 3-2 win over the Panthers earlier this week.
The Leafs averaged 3.39 goals per game that season, good enough for ninth in the NHL, but couldn’t find a way to finish against their second postseason opponent. In a seven-game series against the Boston Bruins in the first round last year, the Leafs ran into similar scoring woes, hitting the net just 11 times in seven games before falling in Game 7 overtime.
“You can just outscore your problems a lot of those games, in the regular season, and a lot of the times you play a horrible game, and you win, you get the results,” Giordano added. ” I think that hurt them at times in the past, but I think they’re maturing enough.”
Giordano has been out of the league this season after failing to sign a contract anywhere. At age 41, he hasn’t officially retired, but it seems unlikely that he’d land on an NHL team after sitting out for a year.
Despite never playing for Craig Berube, Giordano praised the Leafs’ first-year bench boss, and pointed out his 2019 Stanley Cup-winning side as proof of his ability to lead a team in the playoffs.
“I thought they had a little lull in the middle, but it looks to me like there’s a big-time buy-in,” Giordano added. “With Berube coming in… his style of play as a coach, he’s really hammered it home… they got a mature coach, he’s won before, and I think it might push them right to the next level.”