After Sunday’s latest collapse, someone was able to articulate a defence of the Toronto Maple Leafs as currently constituted. Unfortunately, that person was not in the Maple Leafs organization.

“It’s so much closer than you think, but you’re gonna kill these guys and they don’t deserve it,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said to the press. “Puck went our way tonight. That’s it.”

He’s right. If the Leafs just hadn’t given up a 2-0 series lead, and then come out on their backs at home in Game 5, and then did the same thing only worse in Game 7, they were right there.

Agitation and propaganda – that’s Maurice’s job. His art has never been more subtle than it was on Sunday. Because this is exactly what a perpetually stunned organization like the Leafs wants to hear right now.

That they are good enough just as they are (according to a person who stands to gain from them never getting any better) and that changing would be foolish.

As always, this will be the lesson the Leafs will draw from what’s just happened. That they were so close, just one game and half a postseason (the difficult half) away from the promised land.

Philosophy always moves in parallel with expediency on the Leafs, since all their top players have no-movement clauses. There’s only two ways to get rid of any of them – trick them into thinking it was their idea, or wait for them to wander out of the building and lock the door behind them.

If they can’t manage to do that this summer, then the collapsed core could remain intact for at least three more years.

Impending free agent John Tavares is going to need the door locking treatment. Players in their prime have the luxury of playing it coy when their deal runs out (the “I haven’t even thought about it” approach).

Tavares is no longer that guy. If he wants to stay, he has to beg. He was already at it on Sunday night. When someone asked the question, Tavares – a human cliché generator who speaks in three-sentence bursts – said, “Yes” and left it there.

Of course Tavares, 34, wants to stay. If this is it, then he’ll have to admit that coming home was a misadventure that chewed up his best years.

The most notable thing he did in Toronto was refuse to make a fuss when he was stripped of the captaincy. Only the Leafs could publicly humiliate the biggest free-agent signing in club history and call it a step forward. It’s another decision that has blown up on them.

Whatever failures of leadership caused them to turn on Tavares, his replacement, Auston Matthews, hasn’t corrected them. He has instead been flattened under the weight of the responsibility.

Take Matthews’s “too many passengers” comment after Sunday’s game. You’re the biggest weapon on the team, you just scored one goal in seven games and it’s somebody else’s fault?

Think of it this way – is it something Sidney Crosby would say? If it isn’t, then it’s wrong.

The only way that comment works is if it’s “too many passengers, including me.” Either way, Crosby would never say it.

Letting Tavares go isn’t a roster necessity. It’s an act of mercy. This team needs fresh, hopeful faces. Tavares comes out after big losses looking about as hopeful as Eeyore. Let him wander in new hockey pastures for however long he has left.

The other, more difficult problem is Mitch Marner. He popped up briefly on Sunday to scream at his teammates to “WAKE UP,” while tossing his helmet. Otherwise, he was invisible.

Marner is the sort of player who wants to lead the way, until there’s someone bigger than him standing in the road up ahead, at which point he starts to wonder how it’s fair that everyone expects him to lead all the time. He’s the kind of guy who thinks tantrums solve problems.

On Sunday night, Marner was given the same opportunity as Tavares to kiss the logo and swear allegiance. As befits a better player with more options, he was less inclined to do so.

“I don’t have any thoughts right now [about coming back],” he said, twice.

Obviously, Marner – another impending free agent – wants to leave. If he didn’t, he’d have spared himself a summer of contract brinksmanship and signed already.

The Leafs wanted to swap him for Mikko Rantanen a couple of months ago. Marner was not inclined to leave then. Not to Carolina, at least. Had it been, say, Las Vegas, that might have been a different matter.

Marner has been a good servant for the Leafs. Not a great one, but a good one. He can do the organization a final solid by leaving.

On some level, he is The Core Four. Not as electric a talent as Matthews, but a more complete player than Tavares or William Nylander. He is the connective tissue in that group, and the greatest expression of their collective attitude. Filled with self-belief, but hot and sweaty under pressure. Great when it doesn’t matter, shrieking when it does. Once he goes, the benighted Core Four Era ends.

“For me, it’s all between the ears,” Leafs coach Craig Berube said afterward. “I don’t have an answer for that – Why?”

Better question: Why bother?

The Leafs have spent seven years trying to figure out what makes these four guys tick and how to fit them together. Everyone else (save Morgan Rielly) has changed, and not just once. I think we can say with some certainty what the problem is.

In order to change, you needn’t have identified exactly why things went wrong. You just need to admit to yourself that they have.

The Leafs have this one last opportunity to switch up the story. If history isn’t enough, then listen to your opponents. Your friends tell you the truth. Only your enemies will lie to you for your own good.