3 Barnacles Have Been Chipped Off the Maple Leafs' Boat

Watching the Toronto Maple Leafs come back from 3–0 down to beat the Nashville Predators 5–4 in overtime got me thinking about something that really had very little to do with that game. Four games into the season, the Maple Leafs are 2–2. So let's not get carried away. Nothing has been proven yet. But something does feel different. For much of last season, every Maple Leafs conversation seemed to circle back to what went wrong.

Now, at least a little bit, we're looking forward. Maybe it's finally time to close a few chapters.

The first barnacle for the Maple Leafs to chip off is the memory of Mitch Marner.

This is the obvious one. For years, so much of the Maple Leafs conversation involved Mitch Marner. Where was he going? Would he stay? Could Toronto win with him? What would happen if he left?

Well, he left. And perhaps the interesting thing is that Toronto doesn't necessarily have to spend the next five years trying to find another Mitch Marner. Winning the draft lottery and selecting Gavin McKenna certainly changed the conversation. So did adding Kirill Marchenko and Darren Raddysh and bringing in Sergei Bobrovsky.

McKenna is supposed to become an elite offensive player someday. Marchenko already gives Toronto another significant offensive weapon. But here's the thing: McKenna isn't Marner. Marchenko isn't Marner. Nobody has to be. Maybe the Maple Leafs are building something different.

The Core Four era is over now that Marner is out of the picture.

This one might be even harder to close than Marner by himself. Matthews, Marner, Nylander and Tavares gave Toronto some wonderful hockey and some wonderful memories. But they also became a measuring stick for everything the organization did.

Every new player was compared with one of them. Every playoff disappointment somehow came back to them. Every decision was judged against the years when Toronto had four big names eating up a huge chunk of the salary cap. That chapter is over now.

It doesn't mean those players weren't important. They were. It just means the new Maple Leafs shouldn't have to live in the shadow of the old ones.

The third barnacle for the Maple Leafs is what happened last season.

And then there is the simplest barnacle of all: last season. Toronto missed the playoffs after nine straight playoff appearances. Injuries, disappointment, and management questions gave fans plenty of reasons to wonder where the organization was going.

But that season is over. The new management group has its own ideas. Jim Hiller has his own standards. The roster looks different. The expectations feel different.

Four games don't tell us whether any of it will work. But maybe that's not the point. For the first time in a while, I don't find myself asking what the Maple Leafs lost.

I'm wondering what they might become. And honestly, after spending so much time looking backward, hope is a nice direction to face.