Leafs stars address individual narratives but collective flaws remain

In the closely fought seven-game series with the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Leafs biggest stars, namely Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, finally showed that they can be playoff performers but the collective once again failed to get the job done.

Video Transcript

- And this is kind of, I guess, a-- A not-so-new news flash for the players. The comments about the passes in the past, yeah for-- Yeah, I get it, but like-- Yeah, the best way to-- to get rid of those questions and comments were to win a series, man. Like, you know.

I think Marner-- That was, like, Marner's, like, go-to line this year. Passes in the past, you've got to move on. And yeah, individual, I think, narratives have been-- have been kind of, you know, removed. You know, especially when it comes to Marner being able to produce in the playoffs, like that's kind of gone.

You know, [? squirts ?] and [? goals ?] had a-- had a glorious opportunity to score in the first period, but, um, his shot rang off the post. So I think-- when it comes to, like, individual contributions, I think those-- that whole-- you know, you can kind of put the whole past in the past thing and remove that.

But like, as a team, it's still not there. I don't think there will ever be a time now where-- where the Leafs will go into a game 7 and people will not feel, like, dread. Because as it stands right now, they-- they haven't proved that they can get the job done. That's the big thing. They haven't been able to prove it.