Have the Maple Leafs actually figured this whole playoffs thing out? Maybe

Toronto Maple Leafs fans could be forgiven for being excited about having new things to say about their team during the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

The same is true of the media that covers the team in one of hockey's biggest, loudest markets. Such similar themes have arrived every April (and occasionally May) that it sometimes felt like everyone was churning out updated versions of the same stories, just with the dates changed. No need for AI, the stuff practically wrote itself: The goaltending isn't good enough. The defense lacks depth. And the big one: The stars wilted at the wrong time. Culture this, leadership that.

And so, as the Leafs have done a bunch of things they don't normally do this time of year - begin the playoffs with a comfortable win, build a 3-0 first-round lead, start the second round with a pair of home victories - there have naturally been all kinds of new theories to explain the success.

The calming influence of coach Craig Berube, a Cup winner in St. Louis. The veteran additions to the blue line like Chris Tanev, Brandon Carlo, and Oliver Ekman-Larsson. The emergence of William Nylander as an elite postseason scorer. These are the foundations on which a 6-2 playoff record is built.

All of those narratives are backed by some evidence. But if you didn't know anything about the results of Toronto's playoff games, there's also evidence for concern. Auston Matthews has as many goals - two - as Ekman-Larsson and Max Pacioretty, the latter of whom spent the first two postseason games in the press box. The Leafs have seven of their goals - fully a quarter of their offense! - from defensemen. And four of their six wins have come by a single goal, including two in overtime against the Senators and both of their Scotiabank Arena victories over the Panthers.

It's also only been just over a week since the Leafs lost consecutive games to the Senators and had everyone dusting off their old storylines about the team's inability to finish opponents when they had the chance. (To be clear, I also wrote one of those stories.)

So, is this really a changed Maple Leafs team, or have we - fans, media, the whole Leafs Nation circus - just reverse engineered the narratives to fit the results?

Obviously, the results against the Panthers in South Florida will go some way toward answering that question.

But it's also possible to say the Leafs aren't a totally changed team, and not even mean it as criticism. When the results haven't broken their way in the postseason, which has quite obviously happened a lot, it's not like they were routinely being steamrolled by their opponents. The Maple Leafs in the Core Four era have been an almost-but-not-quite team. An overtime loss in Game 7 to the Bruins last season, an overtime Game 6 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2022, a pair of overtime losses in would-be closeout games a year earlier against the Canadiens.

The most frustrating thing about the Maple Leafs' chronic inability to make a postseason run over the previous eight seasons wasn't that they were spectacularly inept at playoff hockey, it's that they repeatedly managed to lose by fine margins. It's also why, when upper management kept insisting they were close and refused to blow up the roster built around four talented and expensive forwards, there was at least a cold logic to it, even as it seemed kind of crazy on some level to keep running it back. Eventually some of those fine margins would turn in their favour, wouldn't they?

To pick one recent example: the Oilers appeared to be doomed by subpar playoff goaltending, then suddenly went all the way to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final last season. Another, from the previous decade: The Capitals were a classic example of a team that couldn't get over the hump in the playoffs, and then found themselves hoisting a giant silver chalice.

It's far too early to imagine the Maple Leafs doing such things. But through one playoff round and two second-round games, Team Run It Back's finally had some things break its way in the postseason. Is that just a product of good fortune? Or are all those things mentioned earlier helping just enough in the margins to make the crucial difference?

It was Nylander, after all, who scored twice to put the Leafs up early in Game 1 against Florida, at a time when Toronto might have been expected to once again show its frayed playoff nerves. And it was those veteran defenders who were throwing themselves in front of shots at the end of Game 2, as the Panthers scrambled for an equalizer.

In the end, it doesn't really matter what's behind the upturn in results, if the Leafs can keep this up. To the victors go the narratives, or something like that.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer with theScore.