Matthews: Leafs had 'too many passengers' in Game 7 loss

Toronto Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews couldn't quite put his finger on what went wrong in a disastrous Game 7 loss to the Florida Panthers on Sunday, but he said there wasn't enough effort throughout the lineup.

"The first 10 minutes they came out strong, the next 10 minutes I thought we controlled play. Then I just thought we had too many passengers throughout the rest of the game and just weren't on the same page," Matthews told reporters postgame.

The Panthers attempted the game's first 25 shots. The Maple Leafs started to get things going in the second half of the opening frame, generating breakaways from Steven Lorentz and Scott Laughton and a glorious opportunity in tight from William Nylander, but they couldn't solve Sergei Bobrovsky.

It was all Florida in the final 40 minutes, as the Panthers went on to win 6-1.

Forward Mitch Marner agreed with Matthews' sentiment.

"That's the right wording I would say, as well," Marner said. "Can't have passengers in a Game 7. We all gotta hold ourselves to a higher accountability."

Matthews and Marner were held off the scoresheet in the loss. They each posted a minus-2 rating and two shots.

Fans threw jerseys on the ice toward the end of the contest.

The Maple Leafs have played in seven winner-take-all games in the Matthews-Marner era, losing all of them. Matthews and Marner have combined for zero goals and five assists in those contests.

This was the first winner-take-all loss under head coach Craig Berube, with the previous six coming under Sheldon Keefe or Mike Babcock. Berube offered a blunt assessment of what went wrong.

"They were the better team tonight. They were the more desperate team tonight. They were the more aggressive team tonight. That's what I take out of the game tonight," Berube said. "You win a Game 6, that's great. You come home, you've got to have a level of desperation, determination, and I didn't feel we had it."

Berube added he believes his team is capable of delivering in a pressure-packed Game 7, but there are mental hurdles to overcome.

"I don't think the moment's too big for them," said Berube, who coached the St. Louis Blues to a Stanley Cup in 2019. "We went to Ottawa and won Game 6 and won a series. We went into the Florida and won Game 6 to make it a Game 7, so the moment's not too big. For me, it's all between the ears. It's a mindset. These guys are capable of doing it. You just gotta execute it. We didn't execute it in Game 5, we didn't execute it in Game 7."