Maple Leafs stars fall silent with season on brink: ‘It’s do or die now’

What happens when you label a game a “must win” and don’t?

Where does it leave a team that throws around buzzwords like urgency and desperation for two days, yet displays less of it than their opposition?

What happens when you allot $40.5 million — nearly half your payroll — to four dynamic offensive stars, and they combine for zero goals in the first three games of a playoff series?

Well, you fall behind 0-3 to a harder-working, more inspired hockey team and risk swiftly skating out of a second round that it took you forever to taste.

A weekend ago, the Toronto Maple Leafs and their nation celebrated the most joyous victory of a generation. Maybe two.

Fans mobbed downtown and chanted “We! Want! Flo-ri-da!” at the top of their lungs, preferring to avoid the top-seed Boston Bruins in the next stop in the bracket.

After Sam Reinhart blew through the Maple Leafs’ defence in overtime, gathered a puck and jammed it through backup goalie Joseph Woll’s five-hole on an uncontested wraparound, sealing a 3-2 comeback victory and pushing the Leafs to cliff’s edge, Florida Panthers fans savoured the irony.

“We! Want! Flo-rid-a!” they sang in with smirking irony as they filed out of FLA Live Arena, 60 minutes away from Round 3.

Toronto’s stars failing to deliver 

Maybe this is all one big troll job.

Maybe the ghosts were never vanquished. Perhaps they just gave the Leafs one more win than usual.

Because when you step back and examine the Maple Leafs’ 4-5 post-season — which features all of one regulation win and benefitted from some overdue good bounces in the Tampa series — it’s difficult to wonder how much progress will have really been made here, should the Leafs fail to make this best-of-seven interesting.

“You gotta start with one and give yourself a chance,” head coach Sheldon Keefe said. “Obviously, they’re in full control here. It’s on us now to make it uncomfortable for them and not go away. We still have a tremendous amount of belief in our group.”

OK.

Well, the Panthers have mounted comeback wins in consecutive games. Their stars have shone. Goaltending has been fantastic. The discipline has been reined in. And their physical play has won them puck battles galore and forced turnovers by a Leafs team that is showing cracks as the pressure escalates.

The Maple Leafs, a roster built to outscore, have not potted more than two goals in five consecutive games. There is plenty of chatter about “digging in,” yet the Cats are the ones digging.

Leafs will try to make history by erasing 3-0 series deficit

Florida had 14 takeaways to the Maple Leafs’ three in Game 3. One side would like the puck, please; the other demands it.

Sunday’s loss marked the Leafs’ first three-game skid since Oct. 30, and their best players are simply not providing enough.

None of Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews, William Nylander or John Tavares has solved Sergei Bobrovsky.

David Kämpf and Sam Lafferty were the Maple Leafs’ most noticeable forwards in the O-zone Sunday. Kämpf and defenceman Erik Gustafsson tied with a team-high three shots. That is not a positive.

The way the big guns blamed crummy luck sounded eerily reminiscent of the Montreal series or the Columbus series or….

“A couple of posts. Stuff’s just not falling, but just can’t get discouraged. Gotta keep pushing. Keep putting our work before everything else and just believe and have faith in each other that we’re going to break through,” Matthews said. “It’s do-or-die now.”

And later: “Sometimes it goes in. Sometimes it doesn’t.”

Added Marner: “I don’t think we can get frustrated. We just have to stick to our abilities. Once you get frustrated, things don’t go well for you at all.

“We’ve had our looks. Just hasn’t gone for us.”

Old narrative returns

Not one of Tavares, Matthews or Marner said anything to the effect of “I need to play better” in that sullen visitors’ room after Game 3.

Keefe refuses to point a finger at the top of his lineup.

“It’s a team game, and we need everybody to find a way to break through here,” the coach said.

The old narrative is in grave danger of becoming new again.

Questions about character and heart and cap structure and the futures of the general manager, the head coach, and the star-studded core will all bubble up over the next 48 hours.

“I mean, it sucks,” Marner said.

“But gotta forget about it quickly. Be pissed off. Now it’s do or die.”

Maybe it already was.