Johnston: Leafs' latest playoff exit makes it clear. Time is up for the Shanaplan

→ Оригинал (без защиты от корпорастов) | Изображения из статьи: [1]

BOSTON — When Brendan Shanahan took over the Toronto Maple Leafs' hockey operations department a decade ago, he felt he needed to eliminate the organization's tendency to take "shortcuts."

The Leafs he inherited were famous for chasing trends rather than trying to establish them. For continually shifting course whenever the wind blew them in another direction. For being good enough to just miss the playoffs every spring but never bad enough to draft and accumulate game-breaking talent.

The guiding principle behind what became known as the "Shanaplan" was really just establishing a culture in which process was valued over results. "The challenge here in Toronto is not to come up with the plan; the challenge in Toronto is to stick to it," Shanahan famously said in April 2015.

When judged by that original objective, his time as team president should be viewed as a success. They certainly haven't wavered.

Except as we sit here now, with the Leafs having lost an eighth playoff series in nine tries under Shanahan after being dispatched in another Game 7 overtime heartbreaker by the Boston Bruins, it feels well past time for the results to start dictating a shift in the overarching approach.

Sure, you could find all kinds of ways to twist the particulars of a best-of-seven that was bookended by Saturday night losses at TD Garden and featured a strange run of injuries into some form of "yeah, but" defense of the Leafs program. But the fact remains that they were again one shot away from moving on and saw that shot fired into their net. They dropped another two playoff games on home ice along the way, making them 2-7 at Scotiabank Arena in the last two springs, and they blew a 1-0, third-period lead in Game 7 for good measure.

"It's very evident that when teams play the Leafs, they set up the game for the Leafs to beat themselves," said head coach Sheldon Keefe.

No matter how close it ends up looking in the end, they always do.

This remains a group that hasn't been anywhere near a lengthy playoff run. A team requires 16 wins in one playoff spring to lift the Stanley Cup, and you'd need to combine the past five Leafs postseasons to count up that many victories.

They were a young group when they lost to Washington in 2017 and then dropped consecutive seven-game series to Boston the following two springs. After Game 7 in 2019, then-coach Mike Babcock said, "I think we're really taking steps and going in the right direction, but we've got to push through and get through this."

Five years on, they still haven't found their way.

It was a familiar solemn walk to the bus Saturday night for the veterans on the third floor at TD Garden. Some munched on pizza after another energy-sapping, soul-crushing loss. They all wore long blank stares while no doubt replaying the vision of David Pastrnak freezing the clock in overtime on a Bruins set play that caught their defenders off guard.

"I mean, this is as tight of a group as I've been a part of here," said Auston Matthews. "And I feel like we say that every year, but I mean, it truly was an incredible group. Incredibly tight."

"Look I don't think there's an issue with the core," added William Nylander, who scored the final three Toronto goals of the season. "I think we were f—ing right there all series. We battled hard and got to Game 7 and OT. It's a s-tty feeling."

All these years on and with so little collective playoff success, these Leafs are carrying deep scars and a considerable amount of baggage and self-doubt.

The latest loss to Boston should be viewed as a step in the wrong direction from the ones that came before it, even when factoring in that Matthews was limited in three games and sat out two others entirely because of illness and injury, and that Nylander missed the opening three games of the series with an eye migraine issue.

That's part of the risk you run when building a program that sees half of the available cap space committed to four forwards. Because of that approach, the Leafs have perpetually found themselves short on wiggle room to fill out the rest of the roster while stockpiling enough depth to sustain themselves when one or more of the Core Four endure injury, underperformance or a run of bad luck.

While that conclusion has arguably been staring the Leafs' front office in the face ever since the 2021 first-round loss to Montreal, the team has resisted action. In fact, Shanahan unequivocally stated two days after that Game 7 loss to the Canadiens that none of his front-line forwards was even under consideration to be moved: "I think any team in the league would love to have any one of them. But we want them. We like them. We want to keep them here."

And so they've stayed.

This was yet another spring in which a team built around elite offensive talent simply didn't score enough, averaging a league-worst 1.71 goals per game in the playoffs while going 1-for-21 on the power play. Mitch Marner finished with just 3 points — his lowest personal total in any postseason — while captain John Tavares finished with just one goal and one assist, although those contributed directly to victories in Game 2 and Game 5, respectively.

Add it up and the Leafs have now played 14 straight playoff games without scoring more than three goals. Even with the improved level of defensive play they showed in rallying to push this series to its limit, their fundamental flaw remained.

The team's core might have been shaken up last spring had former general manager Kyle Dubas been left in charge. He expressed concern about the scoring issues when the games mattered most, saying, "We have to find a way to convert on those chances and we have to find a way to build in different offensive principles that can allow us to produce more at those key moments." He also indicated an openness to considering a roster jolt at the outset of a summer in which Marner gained a no-movement clause on July 1 and new extensions needed to be considered for Matthews and Nylander.

"Perhaps the path needs to shift slightly," Dubas said last May. "It needs to be adapted slightly. You get in between persistence and full belief (in the process) versus being a little too staunch and rigid."

Dubas was fired three days later and replaced by Brad Treliving, who will no doubt be looking to put his stamp on an underwhelming blue-line corps while trying to strengthen the Leafs' goaltending situation this summer. He must also consider foundational changes, with Marner and Tavares each about to enter the final year of his contract and the core having just added another disappointment notch to their belt.

How can that group possibly gather together again for training camp in September and try to convince itself that the next time around will be different?

These Leafs have accumulated more than their share of scars and don't have anywhere near the number of modest playoff successes Alex Ovechkin's Washington Capitals did or Steve Yzerman's Detroit Red Wings did before eventually breaking through with Stanley Cup wins.

Those examples have often been cited as a justification for keeping the Core Four together. But the more time passes, the less they look like the same thing.

"At the end of the day, until you do it, you haven't done it," Treliving told The Athletic in March. "So until you do it, you'll always be thinking, 'Oh, well, here we go again.'"

Under Shanahan, the Leafs have enjoyed an incredible run of regular-season success — playing above a 100-point pace across the past seven years while Matthews accumulated multiple individual awards no member of the organization had won in decades. Matthews, Marner and Nylander have put their names all over the team's all-time record book while Tavares delivered the group's signature playoff moment, eliminating Tampa Bay with an overtime goal last spring for the Leafs' first series victory since 2004.

Even that brief bit of playoff joy was immediately followed by a five-game loss to Florida.

Under the guidance of three different GMs and two head coaches, Shanahan's Leafs have steadfastly refused to alter the plan in response to the familiar and premature end they keep meeting every postseason. They've basically played the longest, most stubborn roster-building game imaginable while endeavoring to eliminate organizational shortcuts.

Surely, that game is now over.

Pretty much everything should be on the table after another season ended too soon at TD Garden.

(Photo: Steve Russell / Getty Images)