SIMMONS: The great goodbye for Marner and another Leafs playoff season

National Post

19-05-2025

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The players stood rather awkwardly in the semi-silence of the Scotiabank Arena, waiting for one last lifeless salute to the hockey fans of Toronto.
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One last uncomfortable way of saying goodbye to another playoff season ending too soon.
Mitch Marner was the last to leave the ice.
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He looked around and waited for all his Maple Leafs teammates to depart, because a likely departure from home is now part of his immediate future. He waited until the handshakes were over, until the sticks were saluted with all that post-game discomfort, until everyone but captain Auston Matthews left the ice.
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And then Marner, uncertain of what the future will be, stepped off the ice at Scotiabank, just after Matthews, quite possibly for the last time after nine somewhat brilliant seasons each of which ended badly.
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This one ended worse than most. Possibly because the score was Florida Panthers 6, Maple Leafs 1 in Game 7 of this Atlantic Division playoff series. Possibly because a best-of-seven series, with Florida winning four games, the Leafs winning three, ended with the final two games at home and Florida outscoring the Leafs 12-2 in those entries.
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With a victory, the Leafs would have had home-ice advantage for the rest of the playoffs, but there is no rest of the playoffs for them. And in the end, home ice proved to be worth nothing but cash for Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment.
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This was another Game 7 defeat for the Leafs. This one uglier than the previous six. In almost all of those games, the Leafs were still alive in the third period of the clinching games. On Sunday night, they were done midway through the second period.
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They were done and now the question is who else is done? Is this the end for Marner as a Maple Leaf, coming up small once again on the biggest of nights These are six Game 7s for Marner, all them defeats for the 90-point career scorer. Six Game 7s and two measly assists to show for it.
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This is six Game 7 losses for captain Matthews too, who unlike Marner does not have his contract running out. Matthews has three assists in his Game 7 life, all six of those games losses as well.
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The rather ancient Brad Marchand had three points in the 6-1 win for Florida. The three points were one more than Marner has scored in the six games he's tried to advance to the next round of the playoffs.
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What happened Sunday night? The Leafs again lost a game and their way. They went into Game 7 believing they had a chance against the Stanley Cup champion Panthers and came away with their collective faces slapped: One team understands what it is to be champion. The other not close to that level, not when it mattered most.