{"id":538552,"date":"2026-04-03T14:35:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T14:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/538552\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T14:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T14:35:12","slug":"maple-leafs-9-year-streak-officially-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/538552\/","title":{"rendered":"Maple Leafs’ 9-year streak officially over"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a> certainly weren’t fooling anyone, but the reality became official on Thursday night.<\/p>\n

The Leafs won’t be going to the playoffs. They were officially eliminated.<\/p>\n

Their loss to send them home for sure came 4-1 at the hands of the San Jose Sharks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It ends a streak of nine consecutive playoff seasons for the Maple Leafs.<\/p>\n

They had gone seven games in the Eastern Conference semifinals last season against the eventual Stanley Cup repeat champion Florida Panthers<\/a>, but Toronto was unable to recapture that level this season.<\/p>\n

The offseason departure of Mitch Marner didn’t help, but this season was about more than just the loss of Marner.<\/p>\n

The depth pieces the Maple Leafs added didn’t help enough. There were injuries, and even when players were on the ice, there were struggles, like a double-digit point-less streak for Auston Matthews before Radko Gudas’ hit ended the captain’s season.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Canucks clinch crucial NHL Draft lottery spot<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s been clear for months that making the playoffs would be a tough ask for Toronto, and when the Maple Leafs went on an immediate winless streak out of the Olympic break, it was all but certain.<\/p>\n

Toronto has already dismissed GM Brad Treliving. Could head coach Craig Berube be next?<\/p>\n

It’s not the kind of season anyone with the Maple Leafs wanted. And to try and bounce back from it, next season’s team and operation might look very different.<\/p>\n

More NHL news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Toronto Maple Leafs certainly weren’t fooling anyone, but the reality became official on Thursday night. The Leafs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5106],"tags":[5,20,5172,4,66,31,5171],"class_list":{"0":"post-538552","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-maple-leafs","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-maple-leafs","10":"tag-mapleleafs","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-toronto","13":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs","14":"tag-torontomapleleafs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116341278333127072","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}