Immediate reaction: Maple Leafs enter the deadline virtually dead in the water with sixth straight loss

In what was, stop me if you’ve heard this before, a pretty solid all-around game until about five minutes into the third period the Leafs lost their sixth straight game to reach the trade deadline with cries for help coming from all sides. The Rangers took the lead while being outshot by the Maple Leafs (a rarity these days) and followed suit not long after with two goals in less than a minute.

The closest I can compare this iteration to the Leafs is the 2019-2020 season. They were completely checked out under Mike Babcock, and despite the brief coaching bump when Sheldon Keefe took over, they were sitting out of a playoff spot in February 2020 before a global pandemic froze them in time.

It was hard for me to accept the “players getting checked out by the coach” narrative earlier this season when they were grinding out wins every now and then. Since the end of the Olympic hiatus and the return to NHL hockey, the Leafs have lost six straight games, and with each game it becomes more and more apparent that there is a rift between the players and the coach. It’s not that they’re purposefully dragging their feet and giving up on games, they’re just lacking any kind of structure. They are predictable at every shift, and when they start to bend, they break, seemingly without any belief that they can do better.

That last line may sound like a familiar trope when analyzing this team, but it’s never been as bad or glaring as it is right now. Teams from their past would save those moments for the playoffs, while this team looks set to miss the playoffs for the first time since Matthews was drafted.

The Berube story is a story for another day, but it is painfully clear that his system has not been nearly effective enough, and the players are playing as if they have no confidence in it. It’s been bad enough to force Brad Treliving to take an unconventional sales path, the first time a Leafs GM has done so in a decade. With tomorrow’s deadline looming, it’s entirely possible that even if this team sells, they’ll get better results on the ice with the bodies they return with compared to the current roster.

PRESENTED BY THE DAILY FACEOFF TRADE DEADLINE SPECIAL