The Toronto Maple Leafs are back from the New Year, baby!
The regular season is now firmly out of the winter break, and the Editor in Leaf staff have been working around the clock to bring you, our loyal readers, right into the middle of the action. Every angle has been covered, and every stone has been overturned.
With so many stories hitting the wall all at once, it’s easy to lose a few in the shuffle. So, enjoy this roundup of this week’s notable pieces.
Toronto Maple Leafs: Bad Trades of the Past Have No Bearing on Future
It’s no secret that the Leafs used to make some awful trades, right? It was basically their calling card for most of my lifetime.
From the real stinkers like Rask for Raycroft to the underrated bombs in the Liles for Gleason territory, it’s hard not to wonder just where the Leafs would be today if they simply never picked up the phone from 2006 to roughly 2015.
Ala, that was then, and this is now. And while the sheer befuddlement of those moves have left some scars in the minds of Leafs Nation, one time or another you’re going to need to get over it.
The Leafs’ roster, as it stands now, desperately needs some tweaks. The pieces are there, mind you, but upgrading to the right side, in particular, is necessary to avoid yet another first round exit. Like it or not, that can only be done via trade.
James explains why the trades of the past shouldn’t deter you from making moves in the present.
“The Leafs, for a myriad of reasons (some reasonable, like trading for Owen Nolan, others insane, like trading for Wendel Clark) have a history of doing this. Some of those reasons were sound at the time, and only retroactively when we know that they didn’t win do they become a bad move.
But you have to take risks. You can’t just refuse to ever trade prospects, the key is timing and making smart moves.
I think we can all agree that low-risk depth moves are clearly a very smart trade deadline tactic. What we are really talking about here is the big move, and whether or not the Leafs should make it. If they do, I think we should also agree that there is probably not a lot of value in a rental move. Not for top prospects. In order to make a move worth making, you must get more than one playoff shot with your upgrade. (Although I am sure there are exceptions).”
Toronto Maple Leafs: Booing is Bad for Business
Hey, don’t boo your own players. That’s probably a fair thing to ask, right? Especially when the team said players play for are clearly in the top tier of the league. One bad night does not erase all of that success and, sometimes, a mid-January loss to a garbage opponent doesn’t mean as much as you think it does.
That’s basically the crux of D.J,’s piece. Don’t boo Jake Gardiner. It’s not nice, and it’s certainly not logical. Do any other fanbases boo their own 50-point defencemen? No? I thought so.
Give D.J.’s piece a read.
“For all his mystifying decisions with the puck and lack of physicality, Jake Gardiner is a good defenseman. Very good. Defensemen that skate, munch minutes and put up points like him (he’s notched 43 and 52 points the past couple of years) are a valuable commodity in this league. For the old school plus/minus loving fans, he’s also plus 18 this year while playing with Nikita Zaitsev.
That’s what makes booing Gardiner specifically an idiotic thing to do after the whole team played poorly on Monday night. Yes, his play on Soderberg’s goal was terrible, but is Gardiner uniquely at fault for each goal? We all watched the same game and the whole team didn’t really show up, despite scoring a couple of quick goals for the lead early on.
For fans with short memories, I’d like to remind them what happened to Larry Murphy.”
Toronto Maple Leafs: The Return of “Steady” Freddy Andersen
He’s back, baby! Sure, the Michael Hutchinson Era was a fun ride, with twists and turns abound, but we all knew it was just a placeholder of what’s to come.
Frederik Andersen is the straw that stirs the drink of the Leafs. As their most important player, his success dictates that of his team’s, and losing him for the bulk of December and early January was a significant blow. But now he’s back And life can resume as normal.
For her first piece at Editor in Leaf, Zoe writes about what Freddie’s return truly means.
“With numbers as impressive as Andersen’s, it should come as no surprise that analysts take note of his performance. ESPN has him ranked as the favourite for this year’s Vezina Trophy, and during his absence, a poll of 20 NHL.com writers placed him at number one as well.
This comes after a career-best 2017-18 season, in which he finished the regular season ranked fourth overall with a save percentage of 0.918 and 38 wins. Since arriving in Toronto in 2016, Andersen ranks fourth among all goaltenders in overall wins (91 of 163 games played) and fifth in save percentage (0.919), according to the stats database on nhl.com.”
Thanks for reading!