CSRF token exception not working in upgraded app

I upgraded an app from 5.0 to 5.1 and am trying to get the token exception to work. Here VerifyCsrfToken.php:

<?php namespace App\Http\Middleware;

use Closure;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Http\Middleware\VerifyCsrfToken as BaseVerifier;

class VerifyCsrfToken extends BaseVerifier {

    protected $except = [
        'deploy/*'
    ];
}

Ive been digging around and Ive found a lot of differences between my Laravel base file and a fresh 5.1 install, even though I followed the upgrade documentation to the letter. Any ideas as to how I can fix this?