For those of you who were hoping for a breakthrough for Toronto’s core players at the 4 Nations Face-Off, simply put, it just hasn’t happened.

Aside from Mitch Marner’s 3-on-3 OT heroics in Canada’s opener against Sweden, it’s been a relatively quiet tournament for the likes of Marner, Auston Matthews, and William Nylander.

For the first two names mentioned, of course, they still have Thursday night’s finale as a potential platform to showcase all those learning lessons from over the years.

As for Nylander, he’s already back in Toronto preparing for Saturday night’s tilt against Carolina following a two-assist output in his three outings.

In the grand scheme of things, their lack of production isn’t the end of the world. As many have enjoyed pointing out on social media, all three players did their thing defensively, so they weren’t complete liabilities like say an Elias Pettersson. It’s come in more of a secondary or tertiary role, but indisputably, they found a way to contribute to their respective squad.

That’s as far as I’ll go with the praise, though.

At the end of the day, there’s no one who can sit here with a straight face and tell me that a Toronto Maple Leafs player stood out – for the better – over the past week. Sure, they had a few moments, but in the long run, they were just okay. For all intents and purposes, they blended in.

And that’s fine —mostly because there’s a variety of others fully capable of shouldering the load.

Any way you slice it, the proof will once again be in the pudding come the Stanley Cup Playoffs. If the Leafs are going to do anything substantial this spring, it will be because their best players are their best players.

Plain and simple.

With all that in mind, as someone who covers the team daily and has been a fan of them for the better part of three decades, yes, I’m mildly concerned that all this was just foreshadowing for what’s inevitably to come in late April yet again.

Groundhog Day. On repeat.

After all, a plethora of players were on the record in comparing the feeling of these games to the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Furthermore, the ineffectiveness of Toronto’s big boys with minimal time and space out there has only reenforced that commentary —at least for me.

Regardless of what happens on Thursday night, we’re about to enter the most important stretch in the modern-day era of this organization. For several individuals, it’s put up or shut up time. Unfortunately, all we can do is sit back and hope that everything clicks, and finally, they go on a run worthy of exercising their long-standing demons.