Quoting: ChiHawk
Look at the series goal totals; and then compared to other playoff series...goal scoring is not the problem. Shutting down the opposition is. You can't let another team score 3+ goals in the playoffs, it's that simple. Analytics over the recent years in the playoffs point to this; it's simply a recipe for disaster yet the Leafs allowed 8 more goals then the Avs did against Tampa as a prime example and yet only scored 1 less goal then the Avs in the first 6 games of the series...it's clear as day the problem.
In the playoffs, the Leafs’ bottom six – which included some combination of Ilya Mikheyev, Pierre Engvall, David Kampf, Ondrej Kase, Colin Blackwell, Jason Spezza, Kyle Clifford, and Wayne Simmonds – combined for three goals, and Mikheyev scored two empty netters. By comparison, Tampa Bay’s bottom six of Ross Colton, Nick Paul, Branden Hagel, Corey Perry, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, and Patrick Maroon combined for 10 goals (no empty netters). However we slice it, the gap in depth scoring was significant.
In the playoff previous, the Leafs’ bottom six contributed four goals – Jason Spezza scored three of them, and one came when he moved into the top six. Joe Thornton scored the other on the power play. In the year before against Columbus, the only bottom-six forward (in terms of time on ice) to score at all was Nick Robertson.
This has been a consistent problem for three years running under this management regime. The difference this past playoff is that the top forwards were full marks for producing. While we hear all the time that a team lives and dies by its stars – which is largely true – when the gap is this tight between top teams, every single player matters.
In previous years, the Leafs loaded the first line with ice time – because they had nothing in the bottom six – and it gassed their top players. This year, they did have some substance in the bottom six – specifically, the third line was legitimately solid – but they weren’t able to provide much offensively. The fourth line was generally a nonfactor outside of taking penalties.
Edit:
But yes, lets add more toughness