‘Looks like confidence is low’: Why Maple Leafs must flip mindset for Game 6
The moment this core-defying playoff series began unraveling from 2-0 Maple Leafs to 3-2 Panthers, it’s the thoughts and the worries that appear to be giving Toronto as much fits as the champions’ forecheck or all-world goaltending.
TORONTO — The mind is a powerful thing.
Unfortunately, much like the Toronto Maple Leafs’ richest talent, it is a two-way player.
And the moment this core-defining playoff series began unraveling from 2-0 Leafs to 3-2 Florida Panthers, it’s the thoughts and the worries, the memories and the fears of the losing team that appear to be giving Toronto as much fits as the champions’ forecheck or all-world goaltending.
“We’ll talk about things, make some adjustments that are needed. But it’s more of a mindset, for me, going into this Game 6 than anything else,” said head coach Craig Berube, as disappointed and bewildered as anyone by the egg his charges laid in Game 5. “It’s not X’s and O’s.”
It’s X’s and Oh-no-it’s-happening-again’s.
“You get in your head. You’re worrying too much about the results and not focusing on the process. That’s where that comes from,” Berube explained to reporters Thursday.
The sage hockey man isn’t prone to much overthinking himself. But he has seen the symptoms before, coached through them before.
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Overthinking — the problem singled Berube out multiple times when describing Wednesday’s 6-1 mess on home ice — manifests in slow feet, dwelling on gaffes, and hesitancy to create.
“We were tentative in the game. We can’t play like that. Take the thinking out. Go play. Be aggressive.
“This is what guys play for. You have to enjoy it. Don’t overthink the game.”
Berube is trying to preach the intangibles, these un-graspables, into existence. And he only has a day to do so.
For it doesn’t take a sports psychologist or a body-language expert to identify the all-too-familiar vacant stares and lacklustre pushback, from Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner in particular, that marred Game 5.
“Looks like the confidence is low,” player-turned-analyst Blake Wheeler told The JD Bunkis Podcast.
“The third (Florida) goal and the play by Marner — that looked like a guy who is carrying the weight of the world and his confidence is low. It’s one thing on the backhand play to turn pucks over. It’s a completely other thing on the back end of that, where you’re not covering the back door and the puck ends up in your net.
“I saw someone trying to manufacture a play there. And when your confidence is low, your brain kinda goes dead too.”
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Shellshock is how Wheeler framed the state of the Maple Leafs as the unravelling continued, and anyone who has rooted for the club in the past nine seasons has seen it before.
Berube tried arguing that “a loss is a loss.” And while we understand why that would be the message, we’d argue that all losses are not created equal. How you lose does matter.
Was it with dignity and fight and sweat? Or was it cloaked in shame, guilt and fear?
Underemphasized north of the border is the fact that Florida is a fantastic hockey team. There is — or, at least, was — a way to come up short against this juggernaut with heads held high.
And although that grace appears to have been fumbled away, the Maple Leafs are not eliminated yet.
A path to victory exists — but Toronto must blaze that trail, and it won’t be easy.
Here’s hope, however faint it must feel:
• Yes, Sergei Bobrovsky has found his groove, spurning all those William Nylander breakaways and allowing just one lonely garbage-time goal over his past two starts. But he’s streaky, and the Leafs humanized him through the series’ first three games.
Get in his kitchen. Drive his net. Traffic. Rebounds. Tips.
“We have to do a better job of making life more difficult on their goalie,” Berube said.
On the flip side, Joseph Woll has been strong. Look at Game 4 and the beginning of Game 5. Support him. Forget the pipe dream of an Anthony Stolarz return — he was doubtful to even travel to Florida for Game 6 — and protect the other guy.
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• Don’t get distracted by the combinations or matchups.
Yes, Aleksander Barkov and Anton Lundell are excellent defensive centres driving dangerous shutdown lines, but Matthews and John Tavares are capable too.
The hardcores will debate lineup changes, but the players themselves cannot. Attack regardless.
“I juggled the lines a lot,” Berube said postgame. “Did you see any different result? I don’t think lines have anything to do with it.”
Neither do we.
• If everyone is looking at the negative history, look at the positive history.
The 2024-25 Leaf have never lost four games in a row, nor three straight on the road — where they won a franchise-best 25 games this season.
“We’ve responded all playoffs long, frankly, whether it’s through a series or through a game,” defenceman Jake McCabe asserts. “Our resilience has been solid and composure’s been good, so I don’t expect that to change.”
• Sports are crazy and unpredictable and anything can happen. Game 5 already feels like rock bottom. There’s nothing to lose now.
Lean into that. Ignore the negativity. Play free.
“We have passionate fans. But at a time like this, I would hope — and I believe — what our team is focused on and needs to be focused on is ourselves and playing better,” said Morgan Rielly, the longest-serving Maple Leaf.
“I believe this team cares, and we’re in a position to go down there and win an important game for our team.”
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• And then there are all those things that build hope over the 89 games that preceded this current slide: patient coaching, deep defence, tight-score patience, and the high-end game-breakers so many teams covet.
Absolutely, the Panthers are great. But talent-for-talent, the Leafs have the ingredients to be great, too.
Regardless of how ugly Game 5 looked, how many fans beat traffic or beat up their favourite team online, “We’re still in the fight,” Rielly insisted.
Step back. Yes, for Toronto, the fight already feels over. The mountain is too steep, the blisters too raw and painful.
But Rielly is correct when he says that you’ll “drive yourself crazy” if you dwell on bad bounces and missed opportunities and what-ifs.
The night before potential elimination, Berube gave simple instructions to his players: “Stick together tonight as a team. Take a breath. Stop thinking about the game tonight. Relax. We’ll get thinking about the game the next day, when it matters.”
And when puck drops Friday, everything will hinge on a state of mind, that must be urgently flipped from whatever the hell the Maple Leafs were thinking Wednesday.
“Just giving more. Digging in more,” Rielly said. “It’s about giving more.”
Any less and they’re toast.
