Toronto Maple Leafs: Some Hard Truths for a Pessimistic Fan Base

The Toronto Maple Leafs are the best  team no one believes in.

Whether it’s the media, the fans or whatever, if you listened to the conversation for ten minutes, you’d never know this was a team on pace to set a franchise record in points.  I even learned from Twitter this morning (forgive me I can’t remember who said it) that the Leafs are on pace to finish with more points than last year’s first place team.

The Leafs are winners of two in a row, five of six, and 11-3-1 in their last fifteen.

You’d never know it by the chatter surrounding the team.

Contending Team Gets No Respect

“I don’t think Kyle Dubas considered the fact that injuries could occur when he didn’t trade for a defenseman at the deadline.”

Sure he did.  Not only did he acquire the best blueliner available a month before the deadline, he’s got a back-up pool of Martin Marincin, Justin Holl, Igor Ozhiganov, Calle Rosen, Andreas Borgman, Timothy Liljegren and Rasmus Sandin.

That is, by far, the biggest pool of NHL capable defenseman available to any contending team.

“The Leafs aren’t tough enough,”

Well, maybe not, but Trevor Moore and Jake Muzzin have added a lot of grit and unlike Adam McQuaid or Wayne Simmonds, they can actually play on this team.

Whenever I hear someone complain about the Leafs lack of toughness, what I hear is “management has a different philosophy than I do, and only a Stanley Cup will change my mind.”  That’s a ridiculously high bar, but so be it.

“If this team doesn’t win a round, they’ll fire their coach.”

No they won’t.  Guaranteed.  Putting some arbitrary results-based stipulation on the way this team is coached is crazy.  The Leafs are in a situation where they have, by far, the toughest road of any contender, save Boston, to the Cup Finals.  They could very likely finish second in the NHL and play the third best team in the opening round.

If they fail to win, that’s not an indictment.  That’s a very plausible scenario and overreacting isn’t going to help anyone.  If the Leafs play Boston, even if they’re a slight favorite, there’s still going to be a 48% chance Boston wins.   Mike Babcock’s job doesn’t depend on winning because Kyle Dubas did not get where he is by reading too much into random results.

That is just not how the Toronto Maple Leafs are run. If Dubas was interested in his own guy, he’d have taken away Babcock’s favorite toys. But he didn’t and the inference is that he believes in him. I don’t personally think they should play Hainsey as much as they do, but I’m also willing to believe that Babcock might have a good reason for it.  At worst, while healthy, he set it up so that Gardiner, Rielly and Muzzin were literally always on the ice at 5v5.  That’s pretty freaking good, no matter what anyone thinks.

A team with the deepest centre depth, and one of the best goalies, who have three top 20 defenseman and a 100 point winger, who can replace one of their top centres with William Nylander, a team that has scored six goals per game for what seems like a month, and who is only out of first place because Tampa is having a bizzaro season where everything goes right deseves more hype and respect.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are crushing it.  The fact that the conversation surrounding them makes it seem like they are a borderline team with a ton of problems, instead of a team that has picked up points in 12 of their last 15 games is insane.

They are a few Loser Points that Calgary and Boston picked up away from being the second best team in the NHL.

Just sayin!