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And now a Stanley Cup second-round series that once seemed well in hand is seriously in doubt as far as the Maple Leafs are concerned following Florida’s 6-1 shellacking in Game 5 on Wednesday night as a bad first period turned into a terrible second and a laugher from the Panthers point of view.

“Tonight was not a good game for anybody,” said Berube. “It’s hard to explain it. We’ve all got to be better, myself included. You can’t start the game that way. That’s a big thing for me. Sets the tone for the game. I don’t have an answer for you for why.

“Sports. Things happen.”

The team’s best paid and highest profile stars — namely Mitch Marner ���Ի���Auston Matthews — will feel the heat around town, producing next to nothing when it mattered most, a theme that has built up around them through most of their post-season career.

“I get it. Our top guys, we need them to produce,” said Berube. “But they’ve done a lot of good things up to this point. Tonight wasn’t a good game for anybody.”

“I’m not going to look at a certain group of players. It’s everybody. There were mistakes. A lot of mistakes. Mistakes happen in games. But it’s the way they happened tonight. It’s disappointing more than anything. We will be better next game. But it’s just disappointing for all of us here.”

Berube was right. It wasn’t just Matthews and Marner. The whole team seemed tentative from the drop of the puck. Nervous. They fanned on chances. They missed easy plays. They stopped hitting and stopped doing the little things that made them successful.

“They competed harder, won more puck battles. That’s the game,” said Matthews. “It’s really as simple that. Just the little details. I don’t think we were very sharp in executing them.

“The only thing we can do is regroup and reset. Go out and win a game to keep our season alive.”

The series now moves to Amerant Arena in Sunrise, Fla., for Game 6 on Friday night with the Panthers a victory away from advancing to the Eastern Conference final.

“They owned us today,” said Leafs forward William Nylander. “We’ve got to try to that to them in Florida.”

Fans at the Scotiabank Arena let their displeasure be known: they booed their heroes. Many left early. One fan took a different tack: throwing a Matthews’ jersey on the ice.

“I don’t think we gave them much reason to stick around,” said Matthews.

Some chanted, hopefully, “Leafs in seven.”

Marner and Matthews

Matthews and Marner have heard the criticism before. Matthews has yet to score a second-round goal in 10 second-round games, all against Florida.

“I don’t look at myself as like a one dimensional player,” said Matthews. “If I’m not scoring, I’m trying to do all the other little things that make the team successful, that make myself successful and try to be an all-around complete player. So I’m going to continue to push and try to score obviously, and keep shooting.

“But obviously all the other little details of my game, I want to do at a high level as well.”

Marner — a free agent July 1 — even fielded a question about whether he might have played his last game as a Leaf in the Scotiabank Arena.

“No thoughts on that at all,” said Marner. “We have to reset. It’s obviously not the spot that we want to be in, but you can’t do anything about it. This is going to be a roller-coaster ride. It’s not going to be easy. We have to have the mindset of going into Florida and take it shift by shift and try to win a hockey game.”

Goalie issues

Another familiar theme with Leafs failure in the post-season is goaltending. The other team always seems to have the better one at crunch time. With Anthony Stolarz sidelined — it might take a miracle for him to return in this series — the burden has fallen on Joseph Woll to be the team’s last line of defence.

Woll is proving to be no match for Sergei Bobrovsky. Woll can be on nights when the Leafs protect him, but the defence has been worn down by constant hitting and attacking by a relentless Florida forecheck leaving Woll as easy pickings for Panther shooters.

By the time Florida got its fifth goal, midway through the third period, Woll was pulled and veteran Matt Murray saw his first post-season action since 2020 with the Pittsburgh Penguins. He’d won the Stanley Cup with them in 2016 and 2017.

It’s never a good sign, though, for a team to be on its third goalie in the post-season.

The only good news: Nick Robertson scored on Bobrovsky with 1:06 remaining, ending Bobrovsky’s shutout streak at 143 minutes 25 seconds.

Up next

The momentum is now all Florida’s. The all-time series record of teams that win Game 5 when a best-of-seven series is tied 2-2 is 237-62 (.793).

“I’m not a big believer in momentum, this series is closer than you think,” said Florida coach Paul Maurice.

The Leafs have lost five of their last seven. The Leafs lost three in a row in the regular season on four occasions. The last time the Leafs lost three in a row (0-2-1) was March 3-8 against San Jose, Vegas and Colorado.

The good news — if it can be called that — the Leafs haven’t lost four in a row all season. That might be a reason to believe they might be able to bring the series back to pc28����for Game 7 on Sunday.

“Everybody’s got to look in the mirror, myself included,” said Matthews. “Everybody wants to be better. Everybody wants to obviously win. We’ve been a great road team all season long. There’s always going to be a belief in this group and confidence in this group from what we’ve done throughout the year. So you get to go into this game with confidence and it’s got to be your best game of the year.”