Run it back — all’s not lost

Don’t fire Brendan Shanahan, or Kyle Dubas, or Sheldon Keefe. Don’t trade Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner or William Nylander. Don’t make a move based on losing a 2-1 game in a seven-game series to the two-time defending champions. It would be a mistake.

There are counterpoints, sure. My esteemed colleague Dave Feschuk enumerates several of them, and they’re good points. The Toronto Maple Leafs lost again. They lost in the first round for the fifth time in six years, and in the other year they didn’t even get there. They lost a winner-take-all game for the fifth straight season; that apparently has not happened in any major sport before. The franchise has not won a playoff series since 2004, or a Stanley Cup since 1967, which was the last year you had a one-in-six chance of doing so, more or less.

And with the fourth-best record in the NHL, and either the Hart Trophy winner or runner-up, they lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 7. The Leafs lost, again. So, try again.

You can pick apart tiny things in Game 7 — the Leafs occasionally showed some skittering nerves as the pressure built down a goal, the power play didn’t click, several chances didn’t go in. Matthews couldn’t match the towering oneman-gang work of Connor McDavid, who dragged Edmonton to the second round later in the night.

You could blame the officiating, as if Justin Holl didn’t stare down Anthony Cirelli before interfering with him to wipe away what would have been a John Tavares goal; it was as subtle as parking in someone else’s pool. Interference goes un

called all the time, but Holl’s was too inartful to ignore. This wasn’t really about the refs.

And still, Marner was on the ice at five-on-five for 21 shot attempts for and three against in Game 7, and Matthews for 22 to 8. Shot attempts aren’t everything, especially when Tampa blocks 21 shots. But that’s tilting the ice. No, Game 7 was a one-bounce game, at the end of what was an almost perfectly balanced series, and the bounces that mattered most belonged to Nick Paul. That’s hockey.

So yes, run it back. People love to say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result, but that’s not what this would be, because two things can be true at the same time.

This team has failed. In the two series losses to the Boston Bruins, the Leafs froze up when things started to go wrong, and the pressure cracked them. The qualifyinground loss to Columbus in the bubble was an embarrassment because even as Frederik Andersen fell apart in net, it was Toronto’s worst habits that helped put them in the position in the first place: the inconsistent effort, the nights they coasted on talent. And the loss to Montreal was just a disaster. That was the series they should have won, in a year where being the best Canadian team meant a ticket to the conference final.

Oh, the agony of being a Leafs fan must be incredible. They never fail to let you down.

But this was different, and if that means measuring with a low bar, so be it. This series was growth. William Nylander said they had played like they were scared to win in previous years, and they didn’t play like they were scared to win.

You want the epitaph for this series? This wasn’t prime Lightning, with departures from last year’s Cup team and the injury to Brayden Point, but Steven Stamkos — the hometown boy the Leafs tried to woo, and scared off when he was a free agent in 2016 — summed it up. He said, “They have everything. It’s just, we have everything, too.” Maybe Tampa loses to Florida without Point, or to Carolina later on, and people say they weren’t that good. It won’t change the fact that the two-time champs played a hell of a series, and needed to be a little lucky to move on.

Run it back. You’re not moving Tavares, Nylander is worth his contract, and Marner and Matthews are superstars. Rielly is the core piece you wonder about, but hold: He is an engine. Swap out some surrounding pieces, get a better backup goalie, bring Mark Giordano back if you can, do the salary-shifting dance again. Dubas keeps finding quality depth pieces for good prices, though the Petr Mrázek contract is a disaster. With a better backup goalie, the Leafs might have won the division and played Washington instead of Tampa. (Alexander Ovechkin has lost his share of 2-1 Game 7s, by the way.)

There will be a hue and cry to chase coach Barry Trotz, but Keefe and Dubas are aligned, and you can’t say Keefe was outcoached in this series.

Again, maybe it’s a low bar with this team, because it’s the Leafs. Maybe they really are doomed. But they played their asses off this time, and lost a great series. As Shanahan and Dubas have insisted, this team is growing, and it’s always been a bit of a race.

Could the Leafs gain experience and competitive toughness faster than they accumulated too many cap anchors, and the kind of scar tissue that weighs you down? There was no evident scar tissue this time.

Which means you let the core try again. It’s not an indefinite plan; it’s not doing the exact same thing. But they’re not scared anymore, so the odds are still that the Leafs will get it right, one of these years. Let ’em try.