Toronto Maple Leafs in Playoff?

The Toronto Maple Leafs team either hit a dead end or seem to collapse year after year in the first round of playoff, although when it comes to playoff they choke, a team top in its division and a team with top four highest paid players consisting of John Tavares, Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander who have nothing to show for in the playoffs, while relying on the player who were signed with league bare minimum – creating a gap between the players with have(Habs) and have not’s.

As an aftermath of Toronto Maple Leafs, losing three games in a row to the Montreal Canadiens, really do have plenty of questions to solve and figure out in the summer, as to what is lacking and how the Toronto Maple Leafs will handle moving forward will have to be seen and how Kyle Dubas pulls rabbits out of the hat.

When asked Wednesday about his top-four players, Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan said “We want to keep them here. We are going to do this here in Toronto with this group. There will be changes that’ll be made, there will be tweaks along the way, of course.” he told reporters.

When referring to Toronto Maple Leaf’s inability to close out the series against the Montreal Canadiens, Shanahan said, “There’s a killer instinct that is missing that we need to address.” or do they lack that sandpaper grinding, which is very much essential? to climb over the mountain of first round playoff.

Although, Shanahan believes in the core players, but with the salary cap stagnated for a while Maple leafs have work to be done, to figure out this summer and Kyle Dubas has his work cut out to fill up with new pieces to the core group and ingest in them that killer instinct which Shanahan mentioned, “There’s a killer instinct that is missing that we need to address.” and confidently said “But we are going to get this done”.

While Dubas said. “I have no doubt that, as we progress through this journey with our group, that they way that they’re viewed as playoff performers will be much different in the future.”

In regular season both Marner and Matthews led the way, with both finishing in the top five in NHL. Auston Matthews had 41 goals to win the Rocket Richard Trophy and is one of three finalists for the Ted Lindsay Award. Maple Leafs regular season was great, with a division title, the Leaf’s first since 2002. In regards to loss to Montreal Matthews said. “You’ve got to have a lot of things go your way. For us, we have no excuses. You have to create your own luck. But we failed to execute in a number of departments.”

Goal: With goalie Andersen certainly gone, Jack Campbell taking away the reigns from him is a solid solution in net although just needs an extra boost of confidence and he should be fine. Frederik Andersen, Jack Campbell, Michael Hutchinson, David Rittich, Veini Vehvilainen, Joseph Woll/