Screen Shots: Toronto Maple Leafs, Paul Maurice, and Blowouts

Welcome back to Screen Shots, a regular THN.com feature in which we break down a few different hockey topics and analyze them in small paragraphs. As always, we’ll get right to it:

Sunday night was a massive letdown for the Toronto Maple Leafs, who dropped Game 3 of their second-round Stanley Cup playoff series against Florida and fell behind in the series by a 3-0 mark. The Leafs stayed in the game through three regulation periods, but they were outplayed by the Panthers the entire night and deserved to lose the contest in overtime. 

Leafs fans were rightfully enraged by the all-around poor effort, which essentially spoiled the goodwill they got by beating Tampa Bay in the first round.

We’ve said it many times, but it bears repeating: in the playoffs, your best players have to be your best players. In Game 3, Toronto’s best players were no-shows. Mitch Marner – he of the $10.9-million cap hit – turned over the puck in his own zone numerous times and looked slow and afraid to compete the way the Leafs needed him to. Captain John Tavares wasn’t much better, nor was superstar center Auston Matthews. Toronto’s two best players were fourth-liners Sam Lafferty and David Kampf. That is unacceptable.

The Leafs almost certainly are going to be eliminated by Florida, and the only question will be whether they get swept with a Game 4 Panthers win on Wednesday or whether they prolong the inevitable, win a game or two, and bow out in Game 5 or 6. 

Toronto got outplayed by Tampa Bay for most of the first round and emerged victorious because Bolts goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy was exhausted and unable to steal games for his team. Panthers veteran Sergei Bobrovsky hasn’t been great either, but he’s kept the Leafs’ main scoring threats at bay, and the Panthers have been opportunistic and full of speed and energy in a way Toronto simply has not.

It was nice for a minute or two to think the Leafs have finally turned the corner competitively, but this 3-0 deficit against Florida is a sobering moment, to be sure. Even the additions of playoff-tested veterans Ryan O’Reilly and Luke Schenn haven’t been enough to bring a sense of urgency to Toronto’s game. That’s why the Leafs’ performance has been so disheartening – most of them were around for previous letdowns, and they understand how angry Buds fans have been in the past seven years. They came out flat and on their heels in Game 3, and it doesn’t seem like they have the ability to ratchet up their game, even when their season is on the line.

The other big takeaway from the Leafs/Panthers series: it sure doesn’t seem like Florida coach Paul Maurice was the problem in Winnipeg, does it? Maurice’s Panthers team was on the verge of not making the playoffs at all this year, but he found a way to motivate and prepare them, and they’re on the verge of knocking off two of the NHL’s top five regular-season teams. 

We knew that when Maurice stepped down as Jets coach, it wouldn’t be long before the coaching bug bit him again, and his current success with Florida proves he knows what he’s doing behind the bench.

This is why it's on the Jets to change their personnel this summer. Their team isn’t all that much worse than the Panthers are, but Winnipeg flailed and flopped miserably in their Round 1 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights. Coaching isn’t the problem for the Jets. It’s the makeup and chemistry of the roster that’s the issue. If Winnipeg brings back a mostly-similar lineup for the 2023-24 campaign, their front office deserves every criticism that comes their way.

Finally, Sunday’s other two games saw massive goal differentials, with New Jersey beating Carolina 8-4 and Seattle topping Dallas 7-2. These haven’t been the only blowouts in this post-season, but these wild fluctuations in scoring do follow the regular-season trend of increased offense in the NHL this year. 

In the playoffs thus far, 10 of the 16 teams have posted a goals-for average of 3.20 per game or more. In the regular season, 21 of 32 teams averaged at least three goals per game.

Whether that reality was because goaltenders were worse as a group this year or that parity in the league has led to boosts in offense is still something that’s up for debate. But the explosion of offense is something the league’s coaches will do their utmost to address next year. 

If we know anything about NHL coaches, we know they’re better at clamping down and gumming up offensive breakouts than they are at boosting offense, and these playoffs are probably going to reflect that as the post-season continues.