The Maple Leafs held a team meeting and media availability at Ford Performance Centre on Wednesday before flying to Ottawa.

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Leafs coach Craig Berube is doing his best to take the pressure off his star players.

“I get it, that’s all I hear around here is ‘Core, core, core,'" Berube said. "'The Core Four.' But it’s on everybody in the team. We’re a team and it’s on the whole team, not just four guys.”

The Leas have dropped consecutive games to allow the upstart Ottawa Senators back into their first-round playoff series. A shot away from advancing in overtime on Saturday, Toronto is now heading back to the Canadian Tire Centre for Game 6 on Thursday.

And the spotlight will be shining brighter than ever on Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and John Tavares. The quartet of forwards, who take up more than half of Toronto's salary cap space, are the top four scorers on the team in the playoffs, but all failed to breakthrough during Tuesday's 4-0 loss in Game 5.

“We’re not looking in the rearview mirror,” said Matthews, who has one goal and six points in the series. “It’s about the next day, next game.”

“It’s not supposed to be easy,” said Marner, who leads the team with seven points in the series. “This is never supposed to be easy.”

And it never has been for this Leafs core.

Toronto is now 1-13 in games when they have a chance to eliminate an opponent since 2018. There is a lot of scar tissue associated with those losses. Most notably, the Leafs blew a 3-1 series lead against the Montreal Canadiens in 2021, which is the last time they entered the playoffs as division winners.

With every day this series against Ottawa extends, there is more and more chatter about Toronto's playoff demons. During this run of losses in potential close-out games, Marner has five assists in the 14 games while Matthews has four goals and five assists.

“It gets to a point in the playoffs where there’s more noise,’” said Berube. “A lot of ‘past’ stuff that I hear around here and that’s all fine. That’s part of it. The only pressure they have is to their own teammates, in my opinion.”

Matthews is in his first season as captain of the team while Marner and Tavares, who relinquished the 'C' in the summer, serve as alternates. They are relied upon to lead the way and set the tone for the group.

“I’ve been really impressed with the leadership here,” said Leafs centre Scott Laughton, who was acquired from the Philadelphia Flyers at the trade deadline. “How bad guys want to win and how bad guys want each other to do well, that’s stuck out to me.”

But is it possible to want it too bad?

“I don’t know,” Laughton said. “I don’t know. That’s a good question.”

Laughton stressed it’s important to embrace pressure.

It sure seemed like the increasing pressure impacted Toronto's top players negatively in Game 5.

On Tuesday night, Matthews and Marner were on the ice for a........

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