The final weeks of a season with games that have almost no meaning can be tough for some players – “silly season,” some people call it.

By the time Game No. 82 wrapped up for the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday night, a 3-1 loss to the rival Ottawa Senators, fans and players seemed to be mentally checked out after what was one of the franchise’s most disappointing seasons in a long time.

Never was that truer than on Thursday during locker cleanout day. Less than 12 hours removed from the team’s 2025-26 season coming to a close, with the Leafs missing the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time in the Auston Matthews era.

Star forward William Nylander, who played a handful of games during that 2015-16 campaign that saw Toronto finish dead last in the NHL before drafting the team’s current captain, looked and sounded audibly exhausted when speaking to members of the media, and didn’t seem interested in answering some of the same questions that he’d been answering for the past few months.

The longstanding narrative that wearing the blue and white is one of the greatest yet most daunting responsibilities in sports has been well told. However, for this core of Maple Leafs, this season wasn’t just a playoff failure; it was a systemic meltdown that has led many to question whether some sort of rebuild or retooling is necessary. Even though someone like Morgan Rielly remembers the dog days of the mid-2010s, players like Nylander, Matthews, and Tavares have never experienced what it’s like to be this bad in a market that, when expectations are high, can be even more critical of its biggest stars.

That pressure, on top of the poor outcome on the ice, led Nylander to keep things short in his final interview before the offseason.

In his quick chat with reporters, Nylander stated that the number of man-games lost due to injury didn’t help Toronto’s chances this year.

“A lot of injuries,” Nylander explained. “I think piled up and, I think, maybe it was a big factor looking back at it.”

Nylander missed a total of 17 games this year, the first time since the 2021-22 campaign that he was unable to complete a full 82-game schedule. A lower-body injury plagued him for the first half of the season, including missing a couple of weeks in January. Matthews ended up playing just 60 games, including missing the final month of the season after a Grade 3 MCL tear and quad contusion after getting hit by Anaheim Ducks defenceman Radko Gudas.

The Leafs were officially eliminated from postseason contention on April 2, with the squad having to play another six games before the season mercifully came to an end. Toronto lost all six of them, blowing a three-goal lead during Hall of Fame broadcaster Joe Bowen’s final home game, before dropping a third straight matchup with the Sens to wrap things up.

Despite the early end to the season, Nylander believes this group can turn things around in 2026-27.

“Like I said, with all the injuries and stuff that we had this year was a big factor, and I don’t think that we won’t be coming back…That’s what my belief is.”

After the loss in Ottawa, some players noted that the relationship between head coach Craig Berube and the players had started to wear thin. Nylander was asked on Thursday if there wasn’t total “buy-in” to Berube’s systems. No. 88 begrudgingly pointed out that the lack of execution could have led to the problems, though he didn’t go into detail on why the team wasn’t meshing with the coach’s game plans.

“I think at some points we weren’t able to maybe execute the system to the best that we could. So, I think maybe that was one of the issues.”

Berube himself stated on Thursday that he’s planning to return next season as the Leafs’ bench boss, though he has yet to hear anything directly from management about his future with the organization.

At the end of his availability, Nylander admitted that missing out on the postseason for just the second time in his NHL career is something that he’s taking the hardest, rather than his own individual performance.

“Personally, I mean, the goal is always to be in the playoffs,” Nylander said. “It’s upsetting to me, and that’s how I see it.”

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