In the biggest game of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ season, nothing seemed to go right for Jake Gardiner. The defenceman finished Game 7 with the game’s worst plus-minus rating at minus-5 in the 7-4 loss, and it felt like every play he was involved in became destined to go awry.

“Not much I can say, really," Gardiner said Wednesday night. "There’s no real explanation. It seemed like everything I was doing ending up in the back of the net."

Gardiner was committed to the stretch pass in the regular season and was over-committed to it all night in Boston, but those have rarely worked in Toronto’s favour over the course of this series. By the end of the second period, he had attempted at least eight stretch passes, only two of which connected with teammates, and by the end of the game two of his stretch passes had directly resulted in goals for the Bruins.

The worst of the bunch though came late in the third period, when the Leafs were trailing by one goal and Gardiner tossed up a stretch pass on a prayer that ended up getting turned over to Pastrnak for the goal that made it 6-4 that sealed Toronto’s fate. Gardiner was in front of the Leafs’ net when the puck went in, and he curled up briefly on his knees in front of Andersen, clearly lamenting how the sequence had played out. It was just one example of bad decision-making on Gardiner’s part, something that plagued him over the series’ first two games but that he seemed to have under control more in the previous two.

“A lot of this game is on me,” Gardiner said after the loss. “The most important game of the season, I didn’t show up...

“You know, personally, I’ve got to be better."

Gardiner’s ability to make game-changing plays to forwards for scoring chances was a hallmark of what was statistically the best regular season of his career. But while the Bruins slowed down the pace of the game and were making safe plays with the puck, Gardiner shied away from the simple and the easy in favour of the game-breaking shot. Ultimately, it did more harm than good for the Leafs. He finished the series with two assists.

“This is going to be a tough one to swallow," Gardiner said. "I let a lot of people down. But, you know what, hopefully I can come back better from it. It’s too bad.”