When Jake Gardiner eats a bad mistake he just looks blank, hollow, a deer in headlights. People who hate Jake Gardiner’s mistakes will probably jump at that reference, because sometimes this very skilled player becomes some kind of blinded hockey Bambi, tripping over his skates, missing the puck, making decisions nobody can fully explain. Every hockey player makes mistakes. Jake Gardiner’s are just more memorable.

Monday night, Jake screwed up. Mitch Marner had lost the puck at the Colorado blue line and Gardiner raced back to get it against Carl Soderberg, and Gardiner tried to throw a shoulder at Soderberg and he didn’t quite connect, and then he swiped at the puck and missed it. Soderberg steamed past him and dove to score, and give Colorado a 3-2 lead.

It wasn’t the winning goal, but it was one of several mistakes the Maple Leafs committed in an uninspired, awful performance. Gardiner got benched for the last 5:31 of the second period. And when he touched the puck in the third, he was booed.

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Just a couple voices, a few maybe, but audible in a quiet rink. It grew every time he touched it. It was never everyone, but it felt like sport. Sometimes fans do that. Toronto fans famously booed a mid-30s Larry Murphy until he was traded, and all Murphy got out of that was two Stanley Cups and his eventual spot in the hall of fame. Bryan McCabe got it, too. Dion Phaneuf, once or twice. Leafs defencemen get it worst.

But in the third period of a tied game, towards a good team, directed at a guy who’s having a perfectly useful season? Harder to find.

“Yeah, I mean, those are the guys that you play for, so it’s good,” Gardiner said of his teammates supporting him.

“Uh, yeah, not playing well, need to be better,” Gardiner said of whether he and partner Nikita Zaitsev were fighting the puck of late. He seemed to want to get out of there.

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He was clearly affected. His teammates, too. Morgan Rielly called Gardiner a great player, a worker, a pro, the most popular guy in the room. Marner said when the young guys arrived, Jake was one of the first guys to talk to them, to make them feel at home. Marner said, “I mean, that guy does everything for this team. People don’t give him enough credit, ever.

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“He’s a big part of this team, and going forward I’m sure he’s going to be the same way.”

Well, Gardiner probably won’t be here after this season; not with Marner pushing his contract value up night after night, and a monster Auston Matthews deal looming next to him. Travis Dermott is in line. It’s going to end, in all likelihood.

And if so, this felt like a rupture. Gardiner, along with Nazem Kadri, is one of the two most-tenured Leafs, and he’s had a funny career here. Gardiner stunk in this game, but so far this year Toronto has scored 63.5 per cent of the goals when he’s on the ice at five-on-five, second-best on the team behind Andreas Johnsson. The formerly gaudy puck possession numbers have declined, but he’s not slipping on banana peels all the time. If you like plus-minus, he’s third on the team at plus-18.

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Yes, he was also the guy who shot the puck blindly onto Patrice Bergeron’s stick to end Game 7 in overtime the year the Leafs blew that 4-1 lead. And yes, he made that inexplicable inside turn on Boston’s winning goal in Game 7 last year, his confidence in tatters. He was minus-5 that night. There’s a history here.

“Had a lead going into the third period, and personally I’ve got to be better,” said Gardiner that night in Boston, gutted. “A lot of this game is on me. And it’s just not good enough, especially in a game like this. It’s the most important game of the season, and I didn’t show up. There’s not much I can say, really.”

But he’s also been a reliable piece for this team in the middle of Toronto’s best season in decades. Look, fans pay a lot of money, especially in this town. They can boo, or wear paper bags on their heads, or throw waffles. You pay your money, you get a megaphone. Leafs fans have seen some things.

Still, Monday night it felt like some people in that crowd got a little too used to prosperity. This Leafs team is in a minor skid, most of it without the starting goaltender, and Gardiner’s stumbled a bit. To be clear, this game was worth booing. Toronto still has the sixth-best record in hockey. And in this game, Gardiner was far from the only problem.

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But a few fans chose him to pick on, because the afterimages of his mistakes get burned into your retina. And more fans joined in. When the playoffs come, maybe against Boston again, and Jake Gardiner is one of the defencemen Mike Babcock trusts most, what do you think will echo in the back of his head? The mistakes? The old scars? His own fans turning on him?

Eh, the fans paying the money probably didn’t think about that. Just the years of frustration, the accumulated anger over the parts they think they remember. It was just one night, but it was unmistakable. It’s his real legacy here: When Jake Gardiner screws up, it overshadows the good stuff.

I wonder what is burned on his retina after all these years here; I wonder how hard it must be to overcome the mistakes and try again with a game on the line with a clear mind, with confidence. You can’t, always, but he tries. Yes, Jake Gardiner screwed up. He has before and he will again. But it’s hard to say that’s what he deserved.