As Maple Leafs training camp opened Wednesday nobody was suggesting the Maple Leafs have an easy way to replace Mitch Marner and the 102 regular-season points he took with him to the Nevada desert. But head coach Craig Berube quickly spun at least one of the positives as the post-Marner dawned.

“What excites me is I don’t have to hear ‘Core Four’ anymore,” Berube quipped.

Ditto ‘Shanaplan,’ what with departed team president Brendan Shanahan not presiding over a Toronto training camp for the first time since 2013. Maybe there’s a universe in which those absences, and the folks who step into those voids, will set off a chain of events that leads to unprecedented success in the playoffs. Surely the Leafs, 2-for-11 in playoff series since Auston Matthews arrived, are overdue for such a

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