The Toronto Maple Leafs 2025-26 season went about as poorly as they could have expected.
Injuries, underperformance, and—even though they don’t like to admit it—the absence of Mitch Marner all culminated in the Maple Leafs missing the playoffs by a landslide for the first time since 2015-16.
Winning the draft lottery to land the first-overall pick has already led some to forget about the nightmarish year it was for Toronto, but John Tavares isn’t one of them. He recently spoke about it in an interview with Josh Yohe of The Athletic.
“Obviously it was an incredibly disappointing year, and on a lot of fronts. Things just got completely off track for us. It was disappointing, the way the whole year went.
Look at the talent we already have, the foundation that we have. Look at the players we have. It’s on us to be the ones to steer the ship back into the right direction. It’s not just on whoever we draft. We have built something in Toronto. It’s something we’ve been working at for a while. We know we haven’t had the success in the postseason that we’d like to have. But we also know just how hard it is to even get to the postseason. I just think this is all a good thing, the talent that we already have and we’re going to select a very talented, skilled player who is going to give the team and the fans a ton of energy,”
The 35-year-old Tavares was productive through it all, tallying 71 points (31 goals, 40 assists) while playing in all 82 regular-season games.
There’s no sugarcoating how badly things went last year for the Maple Leafs, but their nucleus of high-end talent remains in place, and injecting the likes of a Gavin McKenna or Ivar Stenberg, along with other offseason roster improvements, could absolutely bring Toronto back into playoff contention for 2026-27.
