TORONTO — It was almost poetic. A fitting meeting to begin this post-deadline stretch, this grim dash to Game 82. 

After shipping out three talented pieces over the past week, admitting defeat in the final chapter of this disastrous campaign, the Toronto Maple Leafs found themselves face to face with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Just a few years ago, this was a marquee matchup, appointment viewing. These two clubs had battled through a pair of hard-fought playoff series. One of the only bits of progress found in this era of Toronto hockey was borne of those battles, in the Maple Leafs overcoming Jon Cooper’s squad in 2023 after being humbled by the Lightning in 2022.

But here, on Saturday night, with all the principal characters back under the Scotiabank Arena lights, it became clear just how far these Leafs have fallen. There was no back-and-forth this time, no shot-for-shot. Just domination. A 5-2 drubbing by the still-elite Lightning, a seventh straight loss for the now-struggling Maple Leafs. 

No moment put this new disparity in such stark focus as the Lightning’s third goal of the night, scored just 13-and-a-half minutes in. A giveaway by Auston Matthews behind the net, a quick bit of puck movement from a pair of Bolts — and who should be waiting on the end of that sequence but Corey Perry, an all-too-familiar thorn from those playoff battles. The 40-year-old rang in his first game back with Tampa Bay since returning to the organization at the deadline by finishing off the play and scoring Saturday’s game winner.

It was a relic of another time. Perry’s last goal against Toronto in a Lightning sweater? April 2023, in the first round of the post-season. A garbage goal in a 7-2 Game 2 shellacking by the Maple Leafs, a night that saw multi-point efforts from Matthews, William Nylander, John Tavares, Morgan Rielly and Mitch Marner. How times have changed.

“It’s hard. For sure,” Max Domi said Saturday of Toronto’s current situation, the team gliding through a slow, painful descent down the standings. “But we’re pros here — this is what we’re paid to do. We get paid to show up every single day and try and be the best version of ourselves, on and off the ice. … No one’s going to quit, no one’s going to go away here. 

“It’s a tough league, man. When things aren’t going your way like this, it gets even harder.”

It’s been anything but easy for these Leafs of late. Saturday’s loss leaves Toronto still without a single win since the Olympic break in February. The Leafs have lost 15 of their past 20 games, and now rank second-last in the Eastern Conference, 10 points away from a playoff spot that seems all but impossible to grab.

“It’s frustrating,” defender Simon Benoit said. “We’re trying to stick up for each other, play for each other here. Obviously it’s not going the way we want.”

This one was a familiar story. After a brief glimmer of early promise five minutes in — a Matias Maccelli goal that started things off on the right foot — a bit of misfortune erased the positive start. And the home side deflated, giving up goal after goal in quick succession.

“In a span of four, five minutes there in the first, they were just throwing pucks at the net, they were hounding, bodies around the net, and the puck was finding them. We kind of shot ourselves in the foot right there,” netminder Anthony Stolarz said of a first-period onslaught that saw Tampa Bay stack four straight goals on the Maple Leafs.

“It’s obviously tough to crawl out of a 4-1 hole — against anybody, but especially against these guys.”

In the bowels of Scotiabank Arena late Saturday night, after the building had gone quiet, head coach Craig Berube took the podium and seemed to go quiet, too, the bench boss having seen this movie plenty of times before.

“Tough break on the first goal — I thought it took a little bit out of us, put us on our heels a little bit,” he said of Tampa’s first tally, a Ryan McDonagh shot that deflected in off a Leafs defender’s skate at the net-front less than a minute after Maccelli’s goal. “I felt like we kind of were a little bit, not tentative after they scored the first goal, but just not staying with what we were doing. We backed off too much.

“That first goal went in, then they got the other one. You know, the bench was a little bit down. … We’ve got to come out and play to win the game, not [not] lose the game. Right now, when a goal goes in, or two goals go in, we protect too much, and not stay on our toes and play.”

In fairness, his club finds itself with little reason for belief at the moment. This roller-coaster campaign, which always had a chance of swinging back towards the sky at the last moment, has seemed to finally run its course. The gap is too wide, the points too few. Now, they’re simply coasting this final length of track, waiting to return to the station, waiting for another go next season.

The only issue is the amount of track left. Toronto still has more than a month of games to play, more than a month of nights that could very will wind up like this one, like the last six, like most of the last 20. For those in the room, there is only one goal left — try to salvage something, anything, from this final stretch.

“Just try to find our game. Just try to play a complete 60 minutes,” Stolarz said. “We’ve got 18 games left here. We’ve got to battle. We’ve got to work through this. You hate to hear the boos with a minute left — it’s no excuse. We’ve go to go out there, we’ve got to work hard. We’ve got to try to climb out of this.

“We’ve got to find a way. We’ve got to find a way to crawl out of this, and put together a complete 60 minutes.”