SIMMONS: Clock is ticking on Sheldon Keefe to figure out how to jumpstart his Leafs

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Sheldon Keefe is running out of time as coach of the Maple Leafs.

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SIMMONS: Clock is ticking on Sheldon Keefe to figure out how to jumpstart his Leafs Back to video

But the truth is, maybe no one could take these overpaid and under-productive playoff players and make them into a post-season team of consequence.

It was that bad for the Leafs on Saturday night in Game 4 of their playoff series against the Boston Bruins.

It was that lifeless, that disappointing. The only real fight the Leafs showed was on their own bench, with Auston Matthews and William Nylander sniping at Mitch Marner, who reacted to the jawing by throwing his gloves.

It was just about the most emotion the Leafs showed in a must-win game and that by itself is rather sad.

Because there is a certain consistency here with this Leaf team. They don’t rise to the occasion. They don’t turn home-ice advantage into any kind of advantage. Too often, they lack desperation and urgency, and sometimes, too often in this playoff series and others in the past, they seem to lack emotion.

And where does that come from? From the players? From the preparation? From the game plan? From the coach? From the organization? From a combination of all five?

Whatever it is, however it is, this isn’t new for the Leafs with Keefe as coach and before Keefe was coach. It’s a story, sad but true, a Maple Leafs story that won’t go away, can’t go away, until the Leafs re-write it themselves.

Keefe was the coach when the Leafs lost to Columbus in a five-game series. He was the coach when they couldn’t close out against the Montreal Canadiens in the best Stanley Cup opportunity in decades. He was the coach in the playoff losses to Tampa Bay and Florida, the Panthers series not unlike this round with the Boston Bruins.

The main players haven’t changed but the roster has been tweaked each and every year. But the main problem has existed throughout — they don’t play playoff hockey. The highest scoring team in the Eastern Conference has scored 21 goals in its last 11 playoff games.

Less than two goals a game. With Matthews, Marner and Nylander leading the way.

And a comeback seems so unlikely with the Leafs trailing 3-1 in the series and the Bruins heading home for a game. The TD Garden will be alive and screaming Tuesday night. The atmosphere will be what playoffs are all about.

There is a feeling at almost every home playoff game in almost every NHL arena. There is a loud and emotional buzz to the night. An excitement with anticipation brewing. The crowd makes the players faster, braver, more physical, more energized.

Getting through the first minutes of any playoff game on the road is always a test. Just not here. Not in Toronto. Not with this Leafs team.

They began Saturday night playing cautiously and lacking fire. This was not about a crowd not being loud enough: This was about a team being too silent to engage a crowd so hoping to play along.

It was so quiet and still in the first period of Game 4 for the Leafs. The same was true as the second began. It was only after trailing 3-0 to start the third, with Matthews in the dressing room for the last stanza, with Joseph Woll in goal instead of Ilya Samsonov, that the Leafs showed any kind of life.

Any life at all.

But that took two periods. At home?

“I didn’t think we came out flat,” said Morgan Rielly, who should be sentenced to watching the game on Sunday.

“Our season is on the line,” he said. He said it’s on the line. That’s the kind of thing you say when the cameras and notebooks are in front of you.

You say what you think others will want to hear. The words mean nothing, though. Actions mean everything. And there wasn’t enough action Saturday night.

They had two shots own goals and nothing resembling a scoring chance in the first 10 minutes of Game 4. The second period started the way the first one began.

Whatever was happening in the building, the hope, the circumstance, the fact that best players on the Bruins were outplaying the best players on the Leafs. it wasn’t good enough.

What did the Leafs do better than the Bruins in Game 4? Answer: nothing.

Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak were huge for Boston. They are the stars of the Bruins. Matthews didn’t play in the third period, didn’t do much before that. Captain John Tavares is being outscored in the series 8-1 by captain Marchand.

Marner came alive in the third period to score a goal, keep his gloves on, but it was way too late to come back. Nylander looked like someone who had been out for more than a week; his hands and his feet didn’t always seem in sync and having Keefe anchor him on a line with Pontus Holmberg and Calle Jarnkrok which is a lot like asking Fred Astaire to dance with Wilma Flintsone.

Matthews, who had one giant game in the series, was feeling ill and played like it until the doctors ended his night.

So what now in this eighth season of Matthews, Marner and Nylander? What now in this fifth season of Keefe? What now for a team that comes up short each and every April and May, with a first-year general manager and a team president in his 10th season?

The Leafs were shouting at each other on the bench, which means they must care, they just have a strange way of showing it.

What was wrong?

“It’s hard to say,” said Keefe, “hard to pinpoint…we looked a little tight.”

And then he said: “Don’t question our effort.”

He said that with a straight face. He said it in all honesty. He said it as another season is on brink and he has to be wondering if this season is his last.

ssimmons@postmedia.com

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