BOSTON — The call came last summer.

It was from the new general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Brad Treliving, and he had a message for Mitch Marner.

“He made it pretty clear that he wanted to keep our core together,” Marner told The Athletic last fall. “He trusted our core.”

What now for the Leafs and that core after yet another early playoff exit?

“It’s an empty feeling right now,” William Nylander said in what’s become an all too familiar setting for the Leafs, an empty dressing room after a painful playoff loss.

Nylander’s stick, emblazoned with “Willy Styles,” was still standing against a wall in a corner. It wasn’t long after Game 7, and another first-round exit. The mood was dour.

“Look, I don’t think there’s an issue with the core,” Nylander said. “I think we were f—— right there all series battling — battling hard. We got it to Game 7 OT. It’s a s—– feeling.”

Auston Matthews called this particular Leafs team the tightest he’s ever been a part of. “I feel like we say that every year, but it truly was an incredible group, incredibly tight,” he said.

“We’re right there,” John Tavares said. “It’s a very small difference.”

The results are what they are though. The Leafs haven’t gotten close at all. Running it back with this core — Matthews, Marner, Nylander, Tavares, and Morgan Rielly — has not worked.

The Leafs ran it back after they were embarrassed by an inferior Columbus Blue Jackets team in 2020. They ran it back after they allowed a 3-1 series lead to melt away against the Montreal Canadiens, another inferior opponent, in 2021. The Leafs ran it back yet again after they lost in seven games to the Tampa Bay Lightning a year after that. And just when it looked like they would pivot last spring after dropping a five-game second-round series to the Florida Panthers, team president Brendan Shanahan fired then-GM Kyle Dubas and insisted again — with Treliving moving into the GM’s chair — that the core was staying put.

“Just being different doesn’t solve something,” Shanahan said when he announced Dubas’ firing.

And yet, clearly, the status quo didn’t solve anything either. If anything, just the opposite: The Leafs were dispatched again in the first round. Clawing back from a 3-1 series deficit to force Game 7 doesn’t change the fact that running it back one more time backfired.

Is this — finally — the time the Leafs pivot in a major way? And if so, who gets to make that call? And what exactly does it mean?

The question of running it back has to include the member of the core — management division — that never gets mentioned: Shanahan.

No one is more responsible for the Leafs running back the same top end of the roster for so long without playoff results than him. If there was anyone who believed in the power of Matthews, Marner, Nylander, Tavares, and Rielly to get it done, it was him.

He believed over and over and over again despite the results.

After 10 seasons as team president, Shanahan’s Leafs have won one playoff round, which puts them in the same bracket as many of the worst teams in the league over the last decade.

It’s really kind of stunning.

The Leafs have been a top team in the regular season, and Shanahan deserves credit for that, but the goal isn’t to win the regular season. It’s to win in the playoffs and sticking with the same core group hasn’t yielded anything close to a Stanley Cup.

Losing in seven games in the first round isn’t “right there” as Tavares suggested.

Shanahan met with the new president of MLSE, Keith Pelley, earlier this week. Pelley should be asking why it is that Shanahan stuck with this particular group for so long when the results weren’t there when it mattered and, crucially, what he plans to do about it now after another defeat.

Should he even get that opportunity after a decade’s worth of chances?

Shanahan’s thinking went something like this: If the Leafs traded one of their great players away every time they had a playoff disappointment, eventually they might be left with no great players.

He believed that given enough time, enough scars, and enough cracks in the postseason, the stars would eventually come through and the team would be rewarded with the franchise’s first Stanley Cup since 1967.

The problem: The stars weren’t starry enough. Not when it mattered. And in a top-heavy system, like the one the Leafs have been operating with, the stars have to be stars when it matters. They didn’t get there enough, including this spring against Boston.

Shanahan liked to say that sticking to the plan was the hard part in Toronto.

Sticking to the plan for this long though has proven naive. Again and again, it ignored the evidence, which stated, emphatically, that while the players in question were talented — arguably the most talented the franchise had ever seen — for whatever reason the mix didn’t work when the games mattered most.

Something was missing. And the Leafs could have tried to address it at some point along the way. Maybe it wouldn’t have been a sledgehammer to the core, but a scalpel. One piece carved out, another different sort of piece slotted in.

Now, something will almost certainly change, at least a year too late.

The extenuating circumstances of this series — Nylander’s absence for Games 1-3 due to migraines, an illness and injury that derailed Matthews and knocked him out for Games 5 and 6 — won’t matter. They will be as lost to history as Tavares missing almost the entirety of that Montreal series to injury or Sergei Bobrovsky becoming a superhero again all of a sudden last spring.

The Pittsburgh Penguins won a Stanley Cup without Kris Letang in 2017. Steven Stamkos played one playoff game for the Tampa Bay Lightning during their Stanley Cup run in 2020. The teams that win find a way.

The Leafs had an opportunity to pivot in whatever direction they liked last offseason before no-movement clauses kicked in on the contracts of Marner, Nylander, and Matthews.

The date for that was July 1.

Had Dubas remained as GM, and maybe even increased his control of the franchise, the Leafs may have finally shook up their core by moving one of those players (Marner or Nylander) out. Instead, everything that mattered, including head coach Sheldon Keefe, stayed the same.

Now a decision regarding the core feels obvious.

Last summer, the Leafs signed Matthews to a four-year extension that will soon make him the highest-paid player in the league. Nylander got a full eight-year extension in January. Both players have full no-movement clauses.

So does Tavares.

The captain of the Leafs will be entering the last year of the seven-year contract he signed back in 2018. Born and raised in Toronto, and now with a growing young family, Tavares expressed no interest in leaving last summer when the prospect was raised by media.

Rielly likewise has a no-movement clause on a contract that still has another six seasons left on it.

Which leaves Marner, who’s eligible to sign an extension on July 1.

He, too, holds a no-movement clause, which means he only goes elsewhere if he wants to. Which means, at best, a limited pool of teams the Leafs can move him to — and thus, a limited pool of assets they can fetch in return.

Think of it this way: How many teams out there will be interested in a) taking on Marner’s $10.9 million cap hit for next season, b) want to pay him even more than that on an extension c) have attractive assets they would be willing to trade and assets that would be of interest to the Leafs?

All of which is to say, the Leafs boxed themselves in by waiting as long as they did. It’s going to be hard to make a good trade involving Marner, if that’s the route they take.

Does the Maple Leafs’ future include Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews together? (Nick Turchiaro / USA Today)

If not after the Montreal series, it felt like time for Marner after last season. He said all the right things about wanting to be a Leaf, to stay a Leaf, but throughout this past season, he looked a lot like someone who wasn’t enjoying all that comes with being a Leaf — the pressure, the scrutiny, the criticism, the relentless demand for more.

Marner’s poor start to the season was notable for how joyless he appeared, how devoid of enthusiasm and energy.

He finished with three points in seven games against the Bruins. He wasn’t the offensive difference-maker the Leafs needed him to be, especially early in the series when Nylander was absent.

He might be just as ready for a change as the Leafs are. He was prepared for the possibility last summer.

Absent extension talks, and the possibility of a long-term future in Toronto, he might be convinced to accept a trade elsewhere.

Then the question becomes: What should the Leafs look to fetch in return? It’s tempting to say a defenceman, and that might not be the wrong answer if it’s the right defenceman. But it’s not as if this franchise is stocked with high-end forwards beyond Matthews and Nylander.

Can the front office, whoever’s running it, thread the needle and acquire a higher-end forward and a defenceman? And what type of forward anyway? If the point is to try to change the “mix” does it have to be a forward of a different skill set than Marner? Someone harder and heavier to play against?

Or, do the Leafs just seek out the best possible player, period, presumably earning less than Marner, and use the remaining cap space elsewhere?

Are draft picks part of the package? Do the Leafs need to make picks part of the package given their limited supply?

And again, which team has what the Leafs want, meets Marner’s desires if he wants to leave at all, and wants to pay him?

If they are the two key players still running the show, can Shanahan and Treliving get this right? Their first season together as president and GM didn’t go great. They failed to adequately address needs last summer and then let the trade deadline come and go without any meaningful reinforcements, which led to yet another first-round loss.

Can they execute a Marner trade in a way that makes the Leafs better, or at worst, different?

As Treliving himself said last summer when the prospect of moving core players came up at his introductory press conference, “You can throw a body under the tarmac and it might look good for a headline, but are you getting any better? At the end of the day, it’s about getting better. And just being different doesn’t necessarily make you better.”

Not anymore. The Leafs need to be different and get better at the same time. Running it back — again — isn’t an option.

(Top photo of John Tavares, Tyler Bertuzzi and Morgan Rielly: Michael Dwyer / The Associated Press)

Alica Schmidt, a German track star who was dubbed the “world’s sexiest athlete,” qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics three years after having a tough time in Tokyo.

Schmidt was on the team that qualified for the mixed 4×400-meter race at the World Athletics Relays Bahamas 24. Schmidt posted several times on her Instagram Stories to celebrate the accomplishment, according to the New York Post.

“From paradise to Paris,” she wrote on one of her Stories.

On Tuesday, Schmidt and her teammates were celebrating with a trip around Nassau. She posted on her Stories that they were swimming with some pigs on the island.

OLYMPIC GREAT GABBY DOUGLAS MAKES GYMNASTICS RETURN AFTER 8 YEARS AWAY

Germany’s Alica Schmidt prepares to run the Golden League’s women’s 400m. (Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch)

A close up picture of Germany’s Alica Schmidt after the women’s 400m. (Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch)

Schmidt is an accomplished track athlete on the European circuit. In 2017, she helped the German team to a silver medal in the 4×400 relay at the 2017 European Athletics U20 Championships. Schmidt and her teammates won a bronze medal at the 2019 European Athletics U23 Championships. 

The team would finish in sixth place in the 2022 European Championships. She and her team also failed to qualify at the World Athletics Championships in Oregon.

She said in 2021 that she was “taking a break” from the sport after failing to medal at the Tokyo Olympics.

Germany’s Alica Schmidt before the 2022 European Championship’s Women’s 4 x 400m Relay Round 1 Heat 2. (Reuters/Wolfgang Rattay)

Schmidt was named a Forbes 30 Under 30 member in 2023. She has more than 5 million followers on Instagram.

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When Gian Neglia took over as sporting director of the Las Vegas Lights in February, it was a team in name only.

That’s not a figure of speech but a literal description of the situation Neglia inherited. The Lights, who played in the second-tier USL Championship, had no coach, no players and no employees on the soccer side when he joined the team less than two weeks before training camp was scheduled to start.

“We didn’t know where we were going to have training camp. So we needed to find a place, we needed to set up games,” Neglia said. “You really sit down and think about everything that we did and everything that needed to be done in the time frame that it needed to be done, you might think to yourself, well, maybe this isn’t the right move to make.”

He certainly wouldn’t have thought that three months later the Lights would be preparing for arguably the biggest match in team history, a U.S. Open Cup round of 32 match against LAFC on Wednesday in Las Vegas.

LAFC’s short-lived relationship with the Lights is one of the reasons the cupboard was empty when Neglia arrived. For two seasons the team was the MLS club’s affiliate in the second-tier USL Championship, with the players living and training in Los Angeles, then traveling to Las Vegas for home games.

Steve Cherundolo, who has taken LAFC to consecutive MLS Cup finals, got his U.S. managerial start there in 2021, and former and current LAFC players — including Danny Musovski, Christian Torres, Bryce Duke and Tomás Romero — played there. But the affiliation agreement, which was actually separate one-year deals, ended after the 2023 season, leaving the Lights to hire a new coaching staff and 25 new players.

That team won just three games last season, and in January, founding owner Brett Lashbrook sold the rights to the Lights to former baseball all-star José Bautista. Some assembly was required since the team once again had no coaches or players. But for Bautista, that made the investment more desirable.

“It’s somewhat of a rescue project,” he said in a video interview from his home office in Tampa, Fla. “You have to get your hands dirty. But I liked the fact that it was a project that you have to rebuild somewhat the organization from top to bottom.

“That allows you to put your own flavor and your own thoughts and your experiences in trying to build a new culture and reestablish a relationship between a fan base and an organization that has been deteriorating over the last four or five years.”

Bautista, who made more than $100 million before retiring in 2018, was looking for a place to spend some of that money, but the cost was too high in the four major sports leagues. However, the USL Championship and Las Vegas seemed like a good bet. Bautista is just the latest in a flood of athletes and entertainers who have decided soccer is a good investment, a list that includes Hollywood heavyweights Ryan Reynolds, Rob McElhenney, Natalie Portman, Will Ferrell, Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon and athletes Patrick Mahomes, Eli Manning, Kevin Durant, Naomi Osaka and Lindsey Vonn.

“I felt like the USL was the best place to be,” said Bautista, who declined to discuss the cost of buying the team. “All the heightened awareness that’s been happening in soccer in North America in the last few years — it just checked a lot of boxes. It’s just the right place and the right time. And then the opportunity came about with Vegas.”

Bautista concedes there’s much work to be done to win back a supporter base that has questioned ownership’s commitment in recent years. Winning will certainly help in that regard.

The Lights have never made the playoffs — or even finished with a winning record — in six previous seasons and are 3-6-0 after Saturday’s 2-1 loss to New Mexico United, leaving them ninth in the USL Championship’s 12-team Western Conference table. And though the team is second to last in the 24-team league in attendance, averaging less than 1,500 fans a game at Cashman Field, the aging former baseball stadium that is its home, the crowd for the LAFC game will be the largest of the season.

“I know there was some animosity with that relationship and the way that it ended. So from a fan perspective, there could potentially be that like ‘this would be a really good feeling to be able to beat these guys,’” Neglia said. “This is a great test to see where we are in our project, where we match up against quality opponents.

“This round of 32 in the U.S. Open Cup is the furthest this club has ever gone. So it’s an exciting opportunity when you have a chance to kind of David versus Goliath, beat this prestige club from MLS. It’s really a kind of cool coming of full circle event.”

Neglia, who was assistant sporting director at Venezia FC in Italy’s Serie B before coming to Las Vegas, took the job for the same reason Bautista bought the Lights: to be able to work with a blank canvas, building a team and a culture and a vision from scratch.

“You are now looking at a pool of players that is vastly different than the pool I was looking at there. And so you really have to rely on your instincts, on certain metrics and data that you have to use,” he said. “The margin of error is always slim, even in Venezia. You can’t really afford to make major mistakes.

“But here it’s even triple.”

That challenge was made even more difficult by the fact Neglia didn’t start in the job until Feb. 2, 36 days before the regular-season opener. By then, most USL-caliber players already had a place to play, so Neglia and coach Dennis Sanchez had to get creative. They got Valentin Noel, the MVP of last season’s MLS NextPro Cup, on a transfer from Austin FC while Gaoussou Samake joined the Lights after his contract option was declined by D.C. United. Solomon Asante, 34, a two-time league MVP, signed with Las Vegas after Indianapolis allowed him to leave as a free agent while Cuban exile goalkeeper Raiko Arozarena, who played with little distinction in the third tier in Mexico and the U.S., came to the Lights after being released by the Tampa Bay Rowdies.

“I think we did a really good job of being creative and getting some players in that are desirable players,” Neglia said. “But then, of course, there is a good part of the roster that were available free agents. You kind of have to adapt that mentality of misfit toys, right? Where can we get the best of the rest?”

It’s far too early to say how it all will end. But a win Wednesday against a two-time reigning MLS Western Conference champion would certainly be proof that the Lights’ new management is on the right path.

“I’ve been telling people we’re on Page One of a thousand-page book,” Neglia said. “Just playing in this game against this opponent is storybook, right? So if we can go out there and get a win, it would really put a cherry on top of what I think has been a pretty cool three months.”

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.