The Toronto Maple Leafs had a chance on Wednesday to put themselves in pole position to punch their ticket to the Eastern Conference Finals.

Instead, they laid the biggest egg of the Core Four era with a 6-1 loss at the hands of the Florida Panthers in front of their home fans. The star players failed to deliver, there were too many defensive blunders, the Panthers made the most of their chances, and Joseph Woll had a night to forget.

The Leafs suddenly find themselves trailing for the first time in the series with their season on the line in Game 6 on Friday. With how poorly they played in Game 5, some fans were quick to write off the team’s chances as they wait for what they deem an inevitable loss that will see the Leafs once again fall short of hockey glory.

Through the first half of Wednesday’s game, I would consider myself to be part of the group of people who were filled with rage over what was transpiring on the ice. A lot was at stake going into the contest and watching the Leafs wither at the worst possible moment yet again was difficult to comprehend in the moment.

But at some point during the debacle that was the worst loss of the modern era, something inside me started to change. My disappointment and annoyance did not dissipate for obvious reasons, but I instead tried to maintain calmness and not get too worked up about the result. It wasn’t due to accepting that the Core Four don’t have what it takes, but recognizing that Game 5 was just that: Game 5 of a best-of-seven.

Last time I checked, you need to win four games in a series to advance to the next round of the playoffs and Florida has only won three up to this point. They certainly have momentum on their side which gives them the edge going into Game 6, but it is not a guarantee they will indeed emerge victorious in the series. As the old saying goes, the fourth win is always the hardest to achieve.

Based on their recent track record in the postseason, the Leafs know as well as anyone about how true that last sentence is. They also know that their performance on Wednesday was unacceptable and they need to be better.

“I think everybody’s gotta look in the mirror, myself included,” Auston Matthews said to reporters after Game 5. “Everybody wants to be better. Everybody wants to obviously win.”

Trying to find solace in the wake of such a devastating loss is akin to searching for a needle in a haystack, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. For starters, that performance was as anemic as it can get and that alone means the Leafs will certainly be pushing for a better effort on Friday, even if it doesn’t guarantee a win.

Throughout the contest, they certainly had their chances with a few big stops from Sergei Bobrovsky here, a couple of posts there, and some breakaway looks for William Nylander. There is no telling how much the complexity of the game would have shifted had they made good on their looks earlier on when it was still in reach. And while Nick Robertson’s goal may have come during garbage time, they were able to snap Bobrovsky’s shutout streak to give themselves something to build off of.

Speaking of garbage time, those final few minutes of the game saw some pushback in scrums to try and send a message that they were not going down without a fight. It was ultimately futile on a night where nothing went their way, but it is certainly better than doing nothing at all and coasting by as the clock ticked down to their inevitable fate in Game 5.

At the very least, there will be plenty of motivation on the Leafs’ side of things to try and make sure that Wednesday’s debacle will not be the last memory of the season at Scotiabank Arena.

“Some sloppy play, not hard enough working, giving away too many opportunities around our net, there’s a good list of it,” Mitch Marner said. “I don’t think anyone’s happy about it. Time to reset, time to refocus, get ready for our flight tomorrow, go into Florida and play a hockey game.”

If the Leafs want a chance at redemption on home ice, it will have to start with the Core Four players stepping up for once. They collectively have not been good enough since Game 3 and it has resulted in the team losing all of the momentum built up through the first two games. Matthews and Marner, in particular, have once again come up empty in the second round with one goal between them to this point in the series and that will need to change quickly. If they don’t, it will be the end of the Core Four era that will almost certainly be cut in half in the offseason. It could also mean the final act of Brendan Shanahan as Team President, with his bet on the nucleus getting it done once again coming up in flames.

It would be a shame for it to conclude in this manner if Game 5 truly is the last home game this season, but accepting that the status quo cannot continue helps add to the calmness in navigating the tough loss. As I said earlier, the series is far from over which means there is still a chance for the Leafs to flip the script and make everyone forget just how awful Wednesday’s game was. It may feel like the exclamation mark on an era wasted right now, but it could also end up being nothing more than a bump in the road to them changing the narrative once and for all. Many have understandably already made up their mind on how they feel this will all unfold given all of the baggage of the past eight years, but the story of this season has not ended yet.

“There were a lot of mistakes,” head coach Craig Berube said. “For me, mistakes happen in games, but it’s the way they happened tonight. It’s disappointing, more than anything. We’ll be better next game, but it’s just disappointing for all of us, the way we came out in the first period and the way we played. That’s the biggest thing I take out of the whole game.”

At the end of the day, we are merely passengers on a ride that we have no say in how it goes and how it feels. The players and the coaching staff have control of the steering wheel, and they are the only ones who can dictate their destiny. That means general manager Brad Treliving also has little control over the situation; he can only watch on, like the rest of us, what is transpiring on the ice, though the difference is he has the power to do something about it in the offseason.

All of which is to say that getting super worked up about a game we have no way to dictate is ultimately pointless. That doesn’t mean to accept failure because there are no excuses for what transpired, but to instead understand that Game 5 was only one of a possible seven and that tough losses like it happen from time to time.

The last time the Leafs won the Stanley Cup in 1967, they were twice blown out 6-2 by the Montreal Canadiens during the Final. Those were no doubt tough games to watch for the fans at the time, but the annihalations amounted to nothing as the Leafs were able to rebound after the second drumming and win the next two games to close out the series. This doesn’t suggest the same will occur this time around, but it is to remind you that anything is possible in the playoffs.

No matter what happens the rest of the way, there is no doubt that nothing will be the same for the Leafs after this series is over. Either they will finally exorcise more demons or finally make meaningful changes to the nucleus. That alone is what helps give me a sense of calmness after witnessing the worst loss of the Core Four era.