Toronto Maple Leafs: 5 Reasons They Could Not Make 2012 NHL Playoffs

Brian Burke seemed just as shocked as the fans were when the Toronto Maple Leafs fell off the cliff in February.

After spending a few months among the league's elite, Toronto would lose its way to familiar territory: the bottom seven.

Shock on the general manager's part would suggest he never even saw the possibility of this happening.

The fans, though they would never want a good season derailed, have come to expect failure from the team.

"The Maple Leafs Lose" as a headline is as ordinary and commonplace as "The Red Wings Make the Playoffs."

Nobody is smarter than Brian Burke, but this writer would humbly suggest he consider the following five explanations for the Leafs' epic failure of a season.

Lack of Depth

The Toronto Maple Leafs aren't a bad team when everyone's healthy, but you could say that for a majority of the teams in the league.

It's when key players go down that you see what the team is made of.

No captain? No problem for Philadelphia.

No best player in the world? No problem for Pittsburgh.

No Joffrey Lupul, Nikolai Kulemin or John-Michael Liles? Massive problem for Toronto.

There aren't any Leafs who can be relied upon to step up when the need arises. In the absence of some of their best players, the Leafs are forced to thrust lower-line talent or inexperienced kids into roles they are usually unprepared for.

Tyler Bozak last year is a great example.

Inconsistent Goaltending

You know there's a problem with your goaltending if you cringe every time the other team gets a shot on net.

As a Leaf fan, you kind of expect the defense to be lackadaisical on a nightly basis, so you look to the goalies and the forwards to get the job done.

The forwards get criticised a lot, but at the end of the day, Toronto was 10th in the league in goals for with 227.

It's not like you can make them score five-or-more goals every game.

And so, we must look at the goalies.

When James Reimer and Jonas Gustavsson are on, they are unstoppable save for the requisite bad goal.

That's a big "when."

Lack of Experience

The leaders on this Leaf squad simply aren't good enough as leaders.

Dion Phaneuf wears the C, but that's a rant for another time.

Mike Komisarek, Colby Armstrong and Mikhail Grabovski are the assistant captains.

One is usually a defensive liability and spends a lot of time in the press box. Great example for the rest of the team.

One is billed as an agitator, but can't hold his own in a fight, can't skate, can't grind, can't handle the puck and can't score.

The other, we love. Tough guy. From Belarus.

There's not enough real veteran presence in the locker room to mentor and motivate the younger guys (almost everyone) when they're experiencing rough patches (almost all the time).

When you live in Mario Lemieux or Adam Foote's house, you're going to learn a thing or two about not only hockey, but life as well.

If you live with Tyler Bozak, well...let's just say you're going to be an expert at Call of Duty 15, or whatever kids play these days.

Unmotivated by Failure

There are two kinds of people: those who are motivated by success and those who are motivated by failure.

The Leafs, of course, belong to the former group.

Buoyed by a 7-3-1 start, the confident Leafs rolled to a 14-8-2 record by the end of November, good for third in the Eastern Conference.

Two losses to Boston and two three-game losing streaks later, the team found themselves eighth in the conference on New Year's Eve.

New year, new hope.

With a four-game winning streak to start 2012, the Leafs were on a high again. However, despite going 7-4-1 in January, they would finish ninth overall at the end of the month.

They would start February strong with three straight wins, but being in the eighth/ninth spot for a prolonged period of time after having dominated early on would take its toll on the Leafs' confidence.

In their fourth game of the month, they would lose 2-1 to the Winnipeg Jets. One win and nine losses later, February and hope for a playoff spot were gone.

Inability to Learn from Mistakes

The Leaf power play is completely predictable and virtually every other team knows how to beat it. Their penalty killers are slow and lack awareness, so everyone knows how to beat them as well.

The team at even strength is entirely predictable as well. Everybody knows the Leafs are a rush team that will try to beat you with speed.

If you neutralize their speed, you neutralize the entire team.

One way to do so is to trap their D in their own zone, which is easier done than said, unfortunately.

Another way is to simply be aggressive in the neutral zone. Everybody knows the Leafs are not a physical bunch, so if you hit them or just threaten to hit them, they'll cough the puck up.

The world is onto them and the Buds are completely oblivious to it.