One regret that the Toronto Maple Leafs will have this summer
The Toronto Maple Leafs haven’t been clicking this season.
They were a work in progress from the start following a poor summer, but the strange thing was that the new Maple Leafs performed very little work during the season.
Several times, it appeared that Keefe was about to be fired, but the team would stage a spectacular recovery and go on a winning streak.
I’m thinking about an early-season game in Tampa, which was (I believe) their sixth defeat in a row and they won after falling behind three goals in the first period, although there were at least two similar circumstances (the tremendous comeback and eventual overtime loss to Columbus being another).
There were times when the team appeared to be in severe need of both a goalie and a defenseman, yet they did nothing. I’ve never seen a championship-caliber team sit there and do nothing whenever an opportunity arose throughout the season.
Ultimately, having five superstars plus a fantastic supporting cast of scorers worked out, at least for a while, and the Leafs ended up being a top team over a 28-game span, winning more than 70% of their points and leading the league in scoring.
The only problem? Despite this tremendous run, every club the Leafs were competing with went on a similar one, and now with only 10 games left, they have lost the Atlantic Division.
And, while anything can happen in the NHL’s annual Tournament of Variance, also known as the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Toronto Maple Leafs do not appear to be a good bet to win the Stanley Cup.
If we’re lucky, this will serve as a reverse jinx for the squad, and my never-ending litany of regrets will come back to punish me when they win the Cup.
So, here goes nothing.
Hiring Brad Treliving
Kyle Dubas is irritating because he has become a political personality whose viewpoints are so prejudiced and ludicrous that a regular conversation about him is impossible.
The fact is, however, that the Leafs trained a young manager and allowed him to learn on the job, and just as he was about to put that knowledge to use, he moved on to another team.
Dubas was only contentious because a billion-dollar franchise not only put a youngster in control of their club, but also let him to experiment with innovation in an industry that is notoriously anti-innovation. It was great in almost every way and probably won’t ever happen again, therefore it’s awful that horrible luck and situation
It doesn’t matter. He had his run, and while I would have like to keep him, I am also happy to move on. I just don’t enjoy going from the cutting edge of the NHL to the pinnacle of the ordinary NHL GM.
Treliving appears to follow the Book of Cliched Hockey Beliefs, and he is also the only GM in the NHL with two poor teams right now. *(You could include Dubas on this list, but he gave Treliving the league’s finest core and $20 million to spend).
If the Leafs do not advance beyond the first round, the next President of MLSE is expected to remove Shanahan, resulting in a one-and-done with Treliving. I’d prefer to win the Stanely Cup or have a long playoff season, but there is a silver lining.
Brad Treliving is a terrible general manager who should never have been in charge of Auston Matthews’ limited Prime Seasons.
Unfortunately, Dubas lost the power fight. I’d like to see what he’d done without Shanahan interfering all the time.
