What a difference a year makes for the Toronto Maple Leafs. It’s perhaps fitting that the Maple Leafs concluded this tormenting season against the Ottawa Senators. Wednesday’s matchup certainly didn’t warrant the ‘Battle of Ontario’ moniker, as the Senators rested Brady Tkachuk, Jake Sanderson and a host of other players and still defeated a Maple Leafs team playing their best possible roster, despite it being counterintuitive to their short and medium-term needs.

There will be a sense of finality during Thursday’s end-of-year media availabilities, the natural end point to any season, but it may also serve as a pit stop. After this nightmare campaign, the Maple Leafs still need to hire their next president of hockey operations and/or general manager, who will surely replace Craig Berube in short order.

The players are the most culpable for a lost season, which already led to Brad Treliving’s dismissal, to be sure. It is Berube’s year-over-year decline that is most notable. Berube grew exasperated through the early stages of the season, and refused to compromise on his north-south principles. Toronto was simply too slow to retrieve pucks at 5-on-5, outshot 62 times, while Marc Savard’s dismal oversight of the power play led to his firing just before Christmas. It was a half-measure, and Berube somehow escaped the unemployment line, while inexplicably gaining another vote of confidence from Treliving. And perhaps the most frustrating element: Berube almost operated diametrically opposite to his popular reputation before taking on the Maple Leafs job.

Considered to be an old-school task master, Berube instead proved to be a player’s coach to a fault. Once again, it’s fitting that the Maple Leafs conclude this season against the Senators. At this point last year, Berube’s reliance on veteran players paid dividends, particularly his decision to play Max Pacioretty over Nick Robertson. Toronto operated in some ways as the established guard, while Ottawa’s young core of Tkachuk, Sanderson and Tim Stutzle were barely concealing their excitement to arrive at the dance. A year later, Ottawa’s headliners were granted the day off, and weren’t needed for a superficial victory over its sworn rival.

This season, Berube extended carte blanche to Calle Jarnkrok and Max Domi when their performances didn’t warrant a consistent place in the lineup, he provided an extremely short leash to ascending rookie Easton Cowan, and much like Treliving, the modern game appeared to have completely passed him by. Berube is a friendly person to deal with on a day-to-day basis, which is certainly appreciated by this reporter. He also failed miserably with his mandate to elevate a talented team known for habitually underperforming in the playoffs. The notion of the Maple Leafs making the playoffs may have evaporated for good during a dreadful January home stand.

You think of the 2024-25 Maple Leafs’ defence corps, where Chris Tanev excelled, Jake McCabe slotted in well as a No. 2 defenceman, while Morgan Rielly’s decline wasn’t nearly as steep. Tanev has been injured for the majority of the year, Oliver Ekman-Larsson operated as the team’s best defenceman, waiver wire pickup Troy Stecher played the best hockey of his career to keep the team barely afloat in the competitive Atlantic Division, and Toronto featured as the NHL’s worst defensive team for large stretches of the year.

The idea of rooting for the Senators may be an unthinkable proposition, but it’s the position that the overwhelming majority of Leafs fans were forced into. It’s such a bizarre notion: my girlfriend, who watches the road games with me from our home, couldn’t entertain the notion, all the while grasping that the Maple Leafs need to slip into the bottom-five on May 5 to retain their first-round pick. This outcome was unthinkable last April. What a difference a year makes.

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