Toronto Maple Leafs: 2019-20 season obituary, problems moving forward
By Brad Vos
After losing Game 5 to the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Toronto Maple Leafs failed to qualify for the playoffs and ended their season with a whimper.
What can learn from the Toronto Maple Leafs’ 2019-20 season? What did the play-in series against Columbus tell us? Where does the team go from here?
There appear to be more questions than answers with the Maple Leafs heading into the offseason.
Usually, a team’s most glaring weaknesses come into laser focus in the playoffs, especially when they lose. The 2019-20 Leafs had some glaring holes all season long (and for some years now), and these became crystal clear in the play-in round against Columbus.
The team no doubt, needs to make some changes in the off-season. However, before we get into that, let’s do a post-mortem on this season to try to find the cause of death.
Three of the potential causes are a paper-thin defence, lack of playoff grit and curious roster construction. It probably is a combination of all of these three, along with some other factors that turned this Leafs season into a disappointment.