Three Years Later, Maybe the Maple Leafs Had the Wrong

There are some hockey arguments that never really go away. The Maple Leafs' playoff problems were one of them. Three years ago, I went back and looked at the so-called Core Five — Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, John Tavares and Morgan Rielly — and tried to figure out whether the popular narrative was actually supported by what happened on the ice.

The answer was more complicated than the usual playoff conversation suggested. Some players performed better than their reputations indicated. Some numbers weren't particularly flattering. Morgan Rielly was one of the better offensive performers. Mitch Marner's overall impact was strong. Matthews scored goals but didn't dominate every category. There wasn't one simple answer hiding in the statistics. With some distance, that seems like an important thing to remember.

For many seasons, Maple Leafs fans argued over which of the core players was the problem.

That became the familiar conversation around the Maple Leafs. Was Matthews not scoring enough? Was Marner disappearing? Was Nylander inconsistent? Was Tavares declining? Could Rielly defend well enough? Those were reasonable questions, but perhaps they weren't the most important ones.

Maybe the bigger problem was what happened when all of those players were put together.

A hockey team isn't a collection of individual statistics. It is a collection of relationships. Players have to complement one another. Somebody has to retrieve the puck. Somebody has to defend. Somebody has to win a battle along the boards. Somebody has to make the first pass. Somebody has to score. And, in the playoffs, all of those things become harder because the space disappears and the games become more physical.

Was the Maple Leafs’ core ever really the problem?

That is what makes looking back at that old Core Five discussion interesting today. Toronto didn't necessarily have five bad playoff players. It had a team that repeatedly struggled to turn its individual talent into enough collective success. The organization eventually started changing the pieces around those stars. Some players left. Others arrived. The coaching staff changed. The front office changed. The philosophy changed.

And now John Chayka appears to be building something that looks considerably different. There is more emphasis on roles, depth, physicality, defensive responsibility, and on players who can help the stars, rather than simply asking the stars to solve everything themselves.

Perhaps the old Maple Leafs core wasn't the problem as much as the team around them.

That doesn't mean the old core was the problem. It may mean the Maple Leafs finally started asking a better question. Instead of wondering which star needed to be better, perhaps they needed to ask what kind of team those stars needed around them.

Three years ago, the numbers couldn't completely answer that question. Maybe time has.