The Toronto Maple Leafs are one step closer to finishing in the bottom 5 of the standings and giving themselves best possible odds to keep their first-round pick this season and sacrifice an unprotected 2028 first-round pick instead. It’s not an ideal situation for Leafs fans to be in, but we’ve long blown past the ‘get it over with’ stage of the season at this point, so it’s easier to make peace with the reality.

What happened on Thursday night, assuming that there weren’t a ton of Leafs fans who cleared their early long weekend plans to watch the 25th-place Maple Leafs play an out of conference game at 10:00 pm local time, was a likely story. You had a team with a young core and playoff aspirations against a team at the lowest point they’ve been at in a decade who are just trying to get through these last few games, and the result reflected that.

It was a rough night for Anthony Stolarz before anybody else, allowing three goals on the San Jose Sharks’ first 11 shots. Although he tightened up and finished with a respectable 22-save performance on 25 shots, the team once again didn’t have the juice to compete with the Sharks. John Tavares provided the lone goal on the power play, and Easton Cowan picked up an assist, which we can take as a long term positive. That’s about it.

With the Florida Panthers winning and both the Seattle Kraken and Winnipeg Jets losing, the Maple Leafs are tied with the Panthers with 77 points apiece and remain one point up on the Jets and two points up on the Kraken, sitting three points out of the top-five.

The team will continue to play for pride against the Los Angeles Kings on Saturday, where Scott Laughton will look to give his old team a boost by helping his team to two points against them.

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