Last night, fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs disgraced themselves by booing Jake Gardiner on home ice.
Like spoiled children who weren’t allowed an extra cookie, fans lucky enough to get impossible tickets disgraced themselves (and us all) by booing a player from the hometown Toronto Maple Leafs.
Now, if you want to display your pleasure when things are bad, that’s fine.
But the Toronto Maple Leafs are one of the best teams in the NHL, and Jake Gardiner is a 50 point defenseman who makes the team better in every way when he’s on the ice.
I’m so sick of the hypersensitive reaction to easily available highlights where someone must be blamed on every goal. Every player makes mistakes. You can find an example of pretty much anything you’re looking for in video.
Last night, Gardiner screwed up on the power-play and the Avs scored a goal. No different than when Babcock pulled his goalie with three minutes to go against a goalie who can’t stop a beach ball.
Everyone makes mistakes, but a player with a reputation for it gets noticed and blamed and its not right.
Lay Off
Booing the hometown team is sometimes OK – Anaheim has lost 11 in a row and everyone knew that Randy Carlyle was a terrible coach back in 2010, so booing them would make sense.
But the Toronto Maple Leafs are cup contenders with a stacked team who just gifted their fans John Tavares – so booing them for a loss is like complaining that your Limo was one minute late, or that your Lobster was overcooked.
Get over yourself.
The Leafs might be on a bit of a cold streak, and sure, they aren’t playing all that well but guess what? Auston Matthews has one goal in his last ten games, Nazem Kadri, Patrick Marleau and William Nylander all more or less the same thing.
The odds of all those players going cold at once? Low.
The odds that these streaks will be short-term problems that go away on their own and that the players return to their normal production? 100%
The odds of the leagues best power play going cold at the same time? (By any measure other than actual goals it’s the best in hockey, which of course the non-math inclined will laugh at, but scoring chances better predict future goals than actual goals do, and the Leafs lead the league in PP scoring chances per minute). Also low!
Fact is, this is the team we’ve waited years for.
Fact is, all teams have cold streaks.
Fact is, you shouldn’t blame one guy for the struggles of a team. Jake Gardiner has played a hell of a lot better than a certain portion of the fan base will ever admit. He’s one of the best defenseman in franchise history if you forget his reputation and just look at the stats, which are great, because he’s awesome.
Of course he is, I mean, when are the type of people who’d boo a player on their own team ever right about anything?
Fact is, even playing poorly, the Toronto Maple Leafs would be 8-2 if they just got normal scoring from either their power play or Auston Matthews over the last ten games.
Oh, and they didn’t have their goalie for eight of those games.
Yeah, last night’s game was garbage, but funny enough, they almost won even though they didn’t deserve to, because they are a great team. They have an insane roster.
So put on some Dan Bejar and relax. Remember that your favorite team has one of the best rosters in the NHL. They might be on a cold streak, but they’ll be fine.
Look, it’s one thing to boo an actual problem. But complaining about something that is normally great just because it’s a little off that night, that’s different and worse. That’s my opinion.
And don’t mistake booing with critique. You can critique all you want. If you want to argue how bad Gardiner is, that is your prerogative. But publicly shaming a human being because you’re slightly disappointed with an outcome is totally different.
Again, its a matter of context – the Leafs are a great team and Gardiner is a great player. If you want to boo, then boo, but do it when it’s appropriate, not when the seat warmer in your Mercedes is malfunctioning slightly.