The Toronto Maple Leafs are primed to head into a first-round series for the ages beginning on Sunday night, with the return of the Battle of Ontario and a date with the Ottawa Senators.

The Maple Leafs will always have a world of pressure on them heading into the playoffs, and frankly, that comes with the lack of postseason success to date. But this year feels like the stakes are higher than ever. The Senators are young, hungry, and having not seen a playoff berth since 2016-17, the first year the Leafs made it under this core, they’re chomping at the bit for a chance to defeat their provincial rival.

Despite the Leafs being favoured to win the series, they’re going to need contributions from all around the lineup to come out on top, and there are a few players who could help make-or-break the series depending on how they perform.

Another year, another playoff run where Mitch Marner is facing pressure to perform in the playoffs. It may seem just like a copy-paste from past years, but things are somehow even more at stake for him this season. The elephant in the room is his contract situation, facing unrestricted free agency this summer, but that along with a number of other factors leave me with reason to believe he’s finally primed to do some damage and take over a series.

He’s riding the momentum of hitting the 100-point mark in the regular season for the first time in his career, which can only add to his confidence for the playoffs. Pair that with a stellar performance and tournament win representing Team Canada at the 4 Nations, which he was a big part of, and the fact that another raise could be on the line, and Marner might have enough going for him to realize how talented he is and what he’s capable of doing even if the lights are shining brighter. You could use the entire Core Four for Marner’s section here, but with the most at stake from a personal standpoint, he’s the poster boy for this team’s offensive stars finally going beast mode in the playoffs.

Morgan Rielly has seen tons of ups and probably more downs than he would like as the team’s longest-tenured player. After signing a contract extension that gave him a raise up to $7.5 million annually, the pressure from the fanbase and the media naturally increased. With a bit of an ‘on again, off again’ vibe to his past couple of regular seasons, his leash for defensive mistakes has been shortened by the fans. But he has the ability to take anything he’s done in the past and flip the script, and we saw that firsthand two years ago.

The year the Leafs finally broke the curse and won a playoff round, Morgan Rielly was incredible. He scored the overtime-winning goal in Game 3 and the game-tying goal in Game 4, and finished the exhilirating albeit anti-climactic-ending playoff run with four goals and 12 points in 11 games. Rielly doesn’t have to match these numbers to be an X-Factor, but with a sturdy defensive partner that he’s gotten more and more comfortable with in Brandon Carlo and some improved offensive numbers in the final few months of the season, he can be a difference-maker. And the Leafs’ odds of doing anything meaningful will jump dramatically if Rielly can be a force for Toronto the way that Jake Sanderson has been for Ottawa all year.

It seems all but confirmed that head coach Craig Berube will turn to Anthony Stolarz to start Game 1, and that’s not an indictment on Woll’s play whatsoever. The Leafs were able to experience something in 2024-25 that they haven’t had for a long time, and that’s a goaltending tandem that gave them a chance to win every night. Whether Stolarz starts Game 1 and goes on a heater, or whether Woll ends up coming in after a bad Stolarz start and taking the reins for a little bit, the Leafs will desperately need the timely save from their net.

The Leafs have gotten good goaltending performances in past playoff runs, but their netminders were never able to escape that one costly goal that dramatically altered the game. Asking either goaltender to bail them out every night is not a sustainable strategy, but they can’t be setting their team back at all. If the Leafs get sturdy goaltending and know that they’re not constantly at risk of playing behind a multi-goal deficit, they have more than enough in the tank offensively to score two or three goals every night, at least.

It feels like a shocker to be including Robertson on this list considering the way things were last summer. Robertson was a scratch in Game 7 for Sheldon Keefe’s Leafs against the Boston Bruins last season, and his inconsistent play and subsequent up-and-down ice time left him feeling like it was time for a change of scenery. There were doubts that Robertson, a relatively one-dimensional skilled young player would do any better in a new system that’s less forgiving for pure skill types, but Berube has continued to give Robertson votes of confidence, and that confidence might be just what he needs to finally have a big moment for the franchise.

Robertson, despite only having 22 points in 69 games this season, scored 15 goals on the season and had the third-most even-strength goals on the team dating back to the 4 Nations. It’s a fact that Berube won’t be able to ignore, and considering the questions about depth scoring all year, it’s a perfect opportunity for Robertson to step up and become one of the Leafs’ bigger weapons. He does have a playoff goal to his name, after all, if you consider the 2020 play-in series against Columbus a playoff round. Every playoff run has a guy who becomes a hero, and it would be quite the turnaround for Robertson’s time in Toronto if he made something of this year’s playoff run.

Game 1 between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Ottawa Senators is set for Sunday night at 7:00 pm eastern time.