The 2025-26 NHL season started with a lot of promise for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Mitch Marner had just left the team after years of falling short in the playoffs, ending an era in Leafs history that will be looked back upon with some distaste from their fans. Auston Matthews, John Tavares and William Nylander remained on the squad, maintaining the base from previous years. The rest of the roster still featured many of the same faces as years past but had a few notable shakeups.
These fresh faces included Matias Machelli, a former Arizona Coyote and Utah Mammoth player, who Leaf fans hoped would add a nice boost off the second or third line. They also acquired forward Dakota Joshua, who was expected to provide some type of depth and stability on the third or fourth line.
Fast forward to mid-March of 2026 and the Leafs are one of the worst teams in the league, playing some of the most uninspired hockey the franchise has seen in some time. The worst part of it all is that the team doesn’t even own its first-round pick this year, relying on others to lose so it can turn into theirs. It took some injuries, the Olympics and a lack of talent to get here, so let’s look at how the Toronto Maple Leafs managed to hit rock bottom.
The team 2-5-3 in their last 10 games with little to no positive signs to go along with it. There’s been some noise around the league that players aren’t happy with their situation in Toronto, but the blame can’t be placed on coaching or anyone on the bench.
After all, the coach is like a cook.
Like when a restaurant provides their cook with ingredients, the coach is given players from the front office to work with. If the players aren’t talented enough to win games, there is nothing the coach can do.
It makes sense that the talent is lacking, considering they lost one of their only playmakers in Mitch Marner. However, when an entire offence goes down the drain after a single player says goodbye, there’s a deeper issue at hand.
The original conversation about the team heading into the season focused on how they would fare in the playoffs without their best playmaker. That notion has gone completely out the window now that they aren’t even close to sniffing the postseason amidst one of their worst stretches of play in years.
Now, the conversation has shifted towards how they are going to manage the current roster after a putrid trade deadline and a draft in which they don’t even feature heavily. Auston Matthews has scored only two goals since January 21st and the only sense of urgency the Olympic gold medalist has is skating to the beach at the end of a shift.
I know that I am being extremely hard on this team, but the fact that they turned a promising playoff run just one year ago into this is shameful. For decades, Leaf fans have been hoping that one year they will make it to the Stanley Cup final. Last year was supposed to be the one, but all they’ve done since is go back to being the league’s laughingstock.