Auston Matthews and William Nylander of the Toronto Maple Leafs (Jess Starr/The Hockey Writers)
For years, one of the most polarizing debates about the Toronto Maple Leafs has centered on a single question: Can you build a Stanley Cup-winning team around the Core Four? John Tavares, Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, and William Nylander — elite talents, all of them — have been the foundation of the team for years. But in a salary cap era, especially one squeezed even tighter by the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, many fans and pundits have questioned whether committing so much cap space to four forwards is a viable path to a Stanley Cup championship.
And yet, despite the criticism and the annual calls for sweeping change, the two Maple Leafs general managers who oversaw the course – Kyle Dubas and Brad Treliving – have largely stayed the course. The supporting cast has shifted, but the Core Four has remained intact. Right or wrong, the Maple Leafs have bet on their stars.
As we head into another postseason, the question lingers: Has it worked? Maybe this is the season Toronto finally breaks through. Perhaps it isn’t. But in a sport as unpredictable as hockey, where randomness and luck often shape results just as much as talent and tactics, the better question might be this: Were the Maple Leafs smart to stay patient all along?
The Inevitable Chaos that Defines the Beauty and Reality of Hockey
There’s an inevitable chaos in the sport, especially as the postseason arrives. Fortunate or unfortunate, the truth about hockey — the game we all love — is that it’s wildly unpredictable. It’s a sport where luck and randomness often matter as much as talent and planning.
We see it play out every postseason: the better team doesn’t always win. Consider the last six Stanley Cup winners: the 2024 Florida Panthers (ranked second in the regular season), 2023 Vegas Golden Knights (ranked fourth), 2022 Colorado Avalanche (second), 2021 Tampa Bay Lightning (eighth), 2020 Lightning (third), and 2019 St. Louis Blues (12th). It’s tough to argue that the best regular-season team won in even half of those years. In many cases, the eventual Stanley Cup champion wasn’t even close to being the best regular-season team.
That unpredictability is part of hockey’s DNA, and it brings Maple Leafs fans to the coach who led that 2019 Blues team from dead last in January to Stanley Cup winners. Craig Berube is behind the Maple Leafs’ bench. The organization is betting that if anyone understands how to manage the chaos and turn it into a championship, it’s him.
Still, after the Original Six era, it’s been rare for the NHL’s top regular-season team to lift the Stanley Cup. The Presidents’ Trophy winner rarely makes it all the way, and “championship formulas” tend to get written by looking backward after the Stanley Cup has been hoisted. We reverse-engineer success, re-imagining the logic of the decisions that supposedly made the difference. At the same time, we conveniently ignore the lucky bounces (or Mitch Marner accidentally putting a puck over the glass under pressure), favourable whistles, crucial injuries, and sudden hot streaks that did.
The Case for Stability in Toronto
For the Maple Leafs — a team that has consistently dominated the regular season but come up short in the playoffs — this all points to one conclusion: Toronto was right to stick with its Core Four. These elite players give the team the best chance to be successful every season.
Are they a perfect team? No. But neither were the Panthers, who won it all last year. Even up three games to zilch in the 2024 Stanley Cup Final, the Edmonton Oilers pushed back to tie the series at three games each, but then Florida prevailed with a 2-1 win to take Game 7 and the Cup. That series was chaos in a nutshell — an illogical metaphor for an illogical game.
The fact is, the Maple Leafs’ postseason woes aren’t rooted in some fatal flaw of their top four forwards, but in the reality that hockey is a chaotic game. This fact frustrates fans because it challenges how we understand wins and losses. Why engage in game analysis if chance plays a significant role in a Stanley Cup championship? Here’s where game theory offers insight. In games that engage both luck and skill, like hockey, the most intelligent long-term strategy is to keep making good decisions and trust that eventually, the odds will break your way.
Trusting the Process Is a Key to Game Theory
In sports, like in life, trusting the process is the right choice, even when the results aren’t immediate. The Maple Leafs have now been in that situation for several years. They continue to make solid moves season after season, but then the team enters the unpredictable nature of the playoffs, where a smaller sample size amplifies the impact of luck. Over an 82-game season, random bounces and hot streaks average out, and the “better” teams usually rise to the top. But in a short playoff series, variance plays a much more significant role, and luck can disproportionately impact the outcome.
The Core Four has shown it can perform during the regular season, and while their playoff exits have often come against teams that went on to reach the Stanley Cup Final, it’s not a sign of failure — it’s a sign that they’re closer than it may seem. It’s like a team that keeps creating good scoring chances but can’t catch a break with the bounces.
The playoff format is unforgiving, but had the Maple Leafs lost in the Eastern Conference Final instead of Round 1, would fans still have called for massive changes, like firing Dubas or head coach Sheldon Keefe? Or trading one of the Core Four? Likely not. The key is consistency, and in the long run, it’s better to keep building on a successful foundation rather than overreacting to a string of bad outcomes.
From a Game Theory Perspective, the Maple Leafs Have Played Well
Game theory, which was initially developed in mathematics and economics, studies strategic decision-making in situations where outcomes depend on the actions of numerous “players.” From a game theory perspective, the Maple Leafs have been playing a strong, rational strategy — and sticking to it. Over the past several seasons, they’ve consistently delivered high-level regular-season results. That suggests their overall decision-making, structure, and core are sound. Yet in the playoffs, they’ve repeatedly fallen short, often against teams that went on deep runs or reached the Stanley Cup Final.
In a game like hockey, where chance and variance play huge roles, game theory advises that players don’t overreact to isolated outcomes. That’s especially true when those outcomes come in small, high-pressure (and highly chaotic) samples like a playoff series. The intelligent play isn’t to panic after each early exit but to recognize that consistently making good strategic decisions (like retaining a high-performing core of elite players) gives you the best odds of eventually breaking through over time.
The Maple Leafs aren’t losing because the team is terrible or built incorrectly. They’re losing because even the best hands don’t always win in games of high variance. The optimal move, frustrating as it may be for some fans, is to keep playing that strong hand until the odds finally tip in their favour.
The Maple Leafs Are Still in the Game
So here we are again. The Maple Leafs, once more, head into the postseason with a strong regular-season resume — and once more, into the chaos that defines playoff hockey. Could this be the year they finally break through? Maybe it is. Perhaps it isn’t. That’s the nature of the game.
But what’s clear is this: the Maple Leafs have built their success on skill and have had the discipline to stick with it. Their decision to stay patient, to believe in their core and keep playing a strong strategic hand might be the very thing that gets them over the top. Brendan Shanahan and Treliving aren’t folding. Whether they know it or not, they understand the gist of what game theory tells us and what playoff hockey has shown us repeatedly.
In a game where one bounce can change everything, sometimes the most brilliant move is to stay the course. Even if 2025 isn’t the season, the Maple Leafs are building their team correctly.
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