To some degree, it’s a challenge shared.

Both the Maple Leafs and Bruins are certainly sharing in the bruises, welts and sprains that have accumulated through five grinding playoff games.

The schedule starts to get equally demanding now, with a possibility of back-to-back contests if this goes seven games. Also, both the Leafs and Bruins have lost twice at home in this series.

That’s a shared failure neither club will be happy about.

It’s at that point, however, where any notion that these are two teams facing the same obstacles ends.

The expectations and pressures on the athletes involved aren’t quite equal at this point. Not even close, actually.

The Leafs may be facing the daunting task of fighting back all the way from a 3-1 series deficit. But they’re not even supposed to be here. According to initial expectations, they were supposed to have Thursday tee times, Saturday by the latest.

In fact, few picked them to even make the playoffs at all. Then, when the playoffs did become a reality, they struggled awkwardly in the final days of the season, blew home-ice advantage and walked into what many believed was the worst possible draw by having to tangle with Boston.

They’d be lucky to get out alive, was the thinking. The Bruins might even steal their equipment, burn their crops and insult their womenfolk.

This was supposed to be a nice easy way for Claude Julien’s talented, experienced group to ease into another Cup run after a surprising first-round misstep last spring while trying to defend their title.

That was the generally held narrative when this best-of-seven series commenced, and it looked to be darn accurate after the Leafs were schooled and embarrassed in Game 1.

Four straight, many chortled.

The succeeding four games, however, have altered the storyline significantly, mostly by demonstrating the Bruins can no longer simply toy with the Leafs as was the case last season when Boston was pounding Toronto by outrageous scores like 8-0 and 7-0.

Nobody’s getting pushed around or laughed at any more. Leafs Nation has even absconded with the “Thank You Kessel” cheer.

This is all gravy.

For the Bruins, it always was somewhat of a no-win situation, or at least one in which if they didn’t dismiss the Leafs quickly, say in the same way that Chicago bounced Minnesota, then hard questions would be asked.

Still, it has all unfolded in a most curious way.

Generally regarded as one of the NHL’s stoutest defensive teams, the Bruins have given the Leafs all kinds of room to attack in the past three games, or perhaps the Leafs have demanded it.

The Bruins surrendered a combined 95 shots in Games 3 and 4 — games they still managed to win — and could have been blown out of the building in the first period of Game 5 when the Leafs pelted Tuukka Rask with 19 shots.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Those kind of numbers are not the mark of a Julien-coached team.

Rask, of course, is still trying to close out his first playoff series and prove he is a worthy successor to the eccentric Tim Thomas. Players like Tyler Seguin, Brad Marchand, Milan Lucic and the great Jaromir Jagr, meanwhile, have yet to put a puck past James Reimer.

Finally, a good number of these Boston players were part of the 2010 team that was leading Philadelphia 3-0 and then lost four straight. Winning the Cup the next spring made much of that memory go away, but it’s still a memory. It still gets mentioned.

The reality, then, as this series goes to Game 6, is that the heat is all on the boys in black-and-gold.

When you play for the heavily scrutinized NHL outfit in Toronto, you’re never playing with nothing to lose, but this is about as close as it ever gets. Next year will be very different.

For the Bruins, it’s all about now. Lose this competition with the Leafs while blowing a 3-1 series lead, and suddenly all the questions that arose during an up-and-down season — is Zdeno Chara getting old? Why is Lucic so inconsistent? Why isn’t Dougie Hamilton playing? — will be revisited in painful detail.

It will make the grilling going on in Vancouver look like a pleasant chat.

The Bruins have 17 players who were in that championship run two years ago. Maybe they just need to be challenged.

But in Game 5, when you expected them to come out on home ice breathing fire and finish off the Leafs with a suitably rambunctious celebration of the 43rd anniversary of Bobby Orr’s famous Stanley Cup-winning goal, they instead opened with arguably their worst period of the series.

They seemed confused, unsettled. It was strange.

All the demons are in the Boston dressing room. The Leafs have been out of the playoffs so long no one even bothers to mention the ghosts of ’67 anymore.

Not the same pressure, not the same challenge, folks. Not at all.