The Toronto Maple Leafs have not really changed

Everything was supposed to be on the table, but the table mostly looks the same.

After another disappointing first-round playoff exit, the Toronto Maple Leafs opened the offseason by telling the hockey world that all options were going to be on the table this offseason, suggesting that we might finally see seismic changes to a franchise that has not really done much with its current core.

“When you see patterns persist and the results don’t change, you have to adjust the way that you think about things,” said team president Brendan Shanahan back in May. “We will look at everything this summer, and we will consider everything this summer, all with the intention of the one thing we are here for, which is to make the Maple Leafs better and to win.”

At the time, it seemed like an encouraging statement because it was at least somewhat looking at the problem.

The problem, of course, being a team that in eight years has won a single playoff series, won just one game beyond the first round, and has finished in third place in its own division more often than not.

It is not just an issue with the Maple Leafs not winning a Stanley Cup in that time. That is forgivable. It is even completely understandable. Only seven different teams have lifted the Stanley Cup since the start of the 2016-17 season and a lot of really good teams have failed to climb that mountain. Championship-or-bust mentalities only set yourself up for disappointment and frustration because the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against even the very best teams in any one season.

The problem is the Maple Leafs are not even getting close. They are still standing at the bottom of the mountain looking up at the peak.

This is not a team that is consistently reaching the Conference Final, or the second round, or is ever just a couple of bounces away. It has lost as underdogs. It has lost as favorites. It has lost evenly matched series. It has lost in seven games. It has blown leads. It has been outplayed from the very beginning. It has lost in every way imaginable. The common denominator is that it just keeps losing. Early. Very early.

When it happened again this season and Shanahan talked about all options being on the table, it led to the assumption that maybe a core member was going to be on the move or that the roster was going to look completely different when training camp opens.

As we start to get closer and closer to training camp, the changes have been significantly smaller and is getting more and more likely that the roster is going to be mostly the same.

— The most significant change was firing of head coach Sheldon Keefe and the hiring of Craig Berube. This does have the potential to be a major change, and Berube does have a Stanley Cup ring as a bench boss, but coaching changes are not always cure-alls when the roster itself has significant flaws. And I am not sure he is the coach to help fix what has been one of the biggest problems for the Maple Leafs in their recent playoff disappointments.

— They brought in Chris Tanev and Oliver Ekman-Larsson to round out the bottom half of their defense. Tanev is an excellent defender and should still have some quality years ahead of him, but his contract might not age well into the future. Nor does he fix their biggest issue (more on that in a bit). Ekman-Larsson got the “played a limited role on a Stanley Cup winning team” bounce and could have some unrealistic expectations placed on him and his ability at this point in his career. This has the potential to be a “why are they playing him this much and against those players?” situation.

— They made Auston Matthews the captain.

And that …. that is pretty much it.

That does not seem to be enough, nor does any of it address a consistent problem that does not always get enough attention with this team.

Let’s talk about all of it.