Toronto Maple Leafs falling apart in playoffs and fans can't be surprised anymore
The Toronto Maple Leafs are doing that thing again, and let’s not pretend any of us are actually shocked after what would otherwise have been a stunning blowout 6-1 loss in Game 5.
Maple Leafs fans seemed confident just a few days earlier when the team held a commanding 2-0 series lead over the Florida Panthers in Round 2 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
But, in typical blue-and-white fashion, the Leafs proceeded to turn high spirits into heartbreak, losing three games in a row — including a disastrous scoring drought that stretched just shy of six consecutive periods.
Pretty on-brand, guys. Pretty on-brand.
The Leafs now trail 3-2 in the series after the pivotal Game 5 loss, and will undoubtedly face a raucous, charged-up crowd in Sunrise, Florida, for what may prove the team’s last game of the postseason on Friday night.
It’s a heartbreak we’ve all lived through year after year, and despite bolstering the team’s scoring talent with grit, firing Sheldon Keefe, and bringing in a new battle-tested coach ahead of this year’s campaign, the team is once again pulling off a statistically improbable collapse in 2025.
Headlines will tell you of shocked fans and stunned crowds, but that’s not how fans feel so much as how one would expect them to feel.
So, tonight, I am going to speak as a fan. Call it a bit of therapy.
Leafs fans may have been stunned in years like 2013 and shocked in years like 2021. But in 2025, it is so much harder to feel any emotion that stems from a sense of surprise. This time it’s a numbness. An acceptance that, even when you build a winning team, the universe will find a way to prevent it from happening.
If anything, the home crowd hurling a chorus of boos at the Leafs proved the fanbase is angry and hungrier than ever to see some real change.
Toronto deserves better than this.
We are the capital of hockey. The permanent home of the Stanley Cup that just can’t seem to get custody for one summer. The laughingstock of the NHL that celebrates a Round 1 series win with fireworks in the streets because we all know that, deep down, this is the most we will probably get in our lifetimes.
But it begs the question of how we got here yet again after such a promising start.
The Leafs suffered a major setback in Game 1 after goalie Anthony Stolarz was hit in the head by Panthers forward Sam Bennett, returning to the game briefly before being transported to hospital via ambulance.
Call me a pessimist, but this was the moment the all-too-familiar fear set in. In a frustrated text exchange with a friend, I compared the team to a Ferrari made of glass. Tuned for performance but fragile enough to be shattered into pieces by a single pothole at a moment’s notice.
Joseph Woll — who split goaltending duties with Stolarz this season — played the rest of the game and would lead the team through wins in Game 1 and 2.
The injury alone wasn’t enough to derail the team’s momentum, but the typical formula of penalty trouble and the disappearance of the team’s star scorers (Auston Matthews remains goalless throughout five games of Round 2 and has now been blanked in 10 consecutive playoff games versus the Panthers) has brought them to the brink of elimination.
So, what happens next if the Leafs once again fail to deliver?
With Mitch Marner, John Tavares, and other teammates entering free agency this off-season, the 2025 run could be remembered as the last of many botched chances for the “core four” to get it done.
The team will have to make some big decisions should it all end in Florida on Friday night, and maybe fans might have some soul-searching to do as well after letting a serial-disappointer convince us all that things would be different this time around.