The Leafs' problem wasn't Marner - it's the bosses
It turns out that Mitch Marner wasn't the problem.
During most of the Toronto Maple Leafs' recent history, over what could be called the Auston Matthews era, there has been a lingering question about what was to blame for the team's repeated playoff failures.
With the Leafs said to be lacking goaltending, a superstar top-pair defender, or the heart and guile required in the postseason, many theories emerged about their problems. Yet, the one inescapable explanation was that the club had a clutch of highly paid forwards who tended to come up short in big games.
All the money Toronto spent on the Core Four meant it couldn't allocate enough elsewhere in a salary-cap world. What would the roster look like if it weren't quite so top-heavy?
After Marner left for Las Vegas as part of a sign-and-trade deal, there's an answer to that question: So far, it looks bad.
The Maple Leafs have won just nine of their first 23 games following Thursday night's overtime loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on home ice. They have fewer points than 14 teams in the Eastern Conference and have been kept out of the basement only because the Buffalo Sabres exist.
The question is no longer whether the Leafs can go on a playoff run. It's if they can even get there.
Speaking to the media this week, general manager Brad Treliving said he takes "full responsibility" for the club's poor start. To which a fair response would be: You don't say.
Treliving arrived in Toronto as something of a panic hire after the relationship between Brendan Shanahan and Kyle Dubas broke down in the spring of 2023. In a rush to fill the position after the Dubas departure, Shanahan went with someone with NHL GM experience, even though Treliving's time in Calgary was mostly notable for losing the franchise's best players.
Treliving infamously wanted time to get to know the Leafs before making any changes, which allowed no-trade clauses to kick in, effectively locking the Core Four in place.
And since that time, unable to make big swings, it has felt like so much tinkering around the edges. Bottom-six forwards brought in and moved out. Depth defenders added to the mix. An unproven goalie tandem replaced by another unproven tandem.
Treliving really started to put his stamp on the team after the playoff ouster in 2024. Sheldon Keefe was out as coach, and Craig Berube was brought in. The intention was clear: a gruff hard-ass who would change the freewheeling Leafs into a squad that could grind out low-event wins.
How's that going? Toronto has given up more goals this season than all but three teams, and its underlying numbers are worse. The Leafs get outshot and out-chanced at an alarming rate, a tendency that goes back to the end of last season, when their goalies were running hot and routinely bailing them out.
Toronto looks old and slow. While it's always easy to point to the coach when a club struggles, the case against Berube is growing with every poor performance.
Not that Treliving agrees.
"Craig didn't become a bad coach overnight," he said this week.
Sure, St. Louis went on an incredible heater after hiring Berube in the 2018-19 season, culminating in a Stanley Cup. But outside of that, his team won exactly one playoff series in his remaining four-plus years with the Blues. This is the coach Treliving brought in to remake the Leafs into more of a playoff-ready squad, and now he looks like a guy trying to hammer a lot of square pegs into round holes.
About those pegs: Treliving used the cap space created by Marner's departure to bring in Matias Maccelli, Nicolas Roy, and Dakota Joshua. They have 17 points between them. Marner has 21 points for Vegas and the best plus-minus on the Golden Knights. Throw in Treliving's trade-deadline acquisitions of Scott Laughton and Brandon Carlo, each of whom Toronto bought with draft capital, and the GM is on something of a cold streak.
The season is, of course, still young. There have been bright spots, such as John Tavares somehow having his best year at age 35. The Maple Leafs also have injury issues, and they could get healthy and go on a roll. Maybe Berube just needs more time to sort out the pieces of his Marner-less puzzle.
Judging by his comments this week, Treliving is inclined to give him that time. General managers tend to do that with the coaches they have hired, in the hope that time will eventually prove them right.
Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.