Playoff hockey shows what this Maple Leafs season was lacking originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

If the Toronto Maple Leafs have playoff hockey on at home, hopefully they're noticing what they were missing this season.

It's impossible to miss in the postseason. It feels like almost every play ends with players pushing and shoving and grabbing.

Occasionally, that leads to actual drop-the-gloves fighting, but often, it's simply about not backing down.

Too often this season, the Maple Leafs backed down.

The big example was when Radko Gudas delivered a questionable knee-to-knee hit on Auston Matthews that subsequently ended the captain's season.

At the time of the hit, there was no major moment of coming to Matthews' defense. The Leafs kind of just let it happen.

But it was bigger picture than that, too. It had to be for this season in Toronto to be so poor.

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The situation that may have called for fight more than any other was the return from the Olympic break. The Maple Leafs knew that to avoid selling at the trade deadline less than two weeks later, they had to come out hot.

Instead, they lost their first six games after the Olympics. That's not a team with much fight in it.

It can be tricky in these spots to know exactly who to blame. Is it the coach? Is it the players? Is it the elusive word in sports, culture?

But somehow, for some reason, the Maple Leafs never found it in them to fight. And that's why they're sitting at home.

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