Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Stay the Course

The Toronto Maple Leafs are giving their critics a lot of fire.

After a terrible, embarrassing loss to the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday, the Toronto Maple Leafs fans are clearly feeling distraught.

It’s been a weird year – a six game losing streak, a coach fired, a ton of injuries, and now a loss to a team who dressed a 42 year old emergency goalie for a period and change.

I can’t defend that game, and I don’t want to.

Toronto Maple Leafs and Their Critics

But at the same time, people who are already critics of what the Toronto Maple Leafs are doing are taking every opportunity to throw stones.

It’s no secret that the guys who make up the mainstream NHL media didn’t like the Leafs eschewing not one, but two of the “200 hockey men” in order to hire a 31 year old who wears glasses, and is seen as a ‘stats nerd.’

These people want nothing more than the Leafs to fail so they can say I told you so.

I mean, how dare someone focus on talent and intelligence, and prioritize this over size, effort and heart?

Even when a classic 200 Hockey Men type guy becomes available, these guys fall all over themselves to link them to the Leafs.

When things go badly, people use the team’s failure to justify their past takes.

The Leafs current problems have nothing to do with leadership, heart, effort, lack of grinders, lack of stay-at-home defenseman, lack of power-forwards or an aversion to fighting.

But that doesn’t stop people from chalking every loss up to the same old crap, while completely ignoring the fact that the Leafs have 50+ years experience losing with  the philosophy Kyle Dubas is trying to change.

The Leafs haven’t played a single game with their optimal lineup this year.  They haven’t even dressed their optimal blue-line for a single game.

Their all-star goalie (who has a long history of excelling on bad defensive teams) is having a career worst year.

Forget about injuries to valuable and helpful players like Johnsson and Mikheyev, they’ve been missing a core star-level player for every single game this year.

And changing coaches and playing styles/systems in mid-stream is difficult.

But even if we ignore all that, the Toronto Maple Leafs are 6th in shot-attempt percentage, 11th in shot-percentage, 12th in expected-goals percentage, 5th in scoring-chance percentage, and 9th in high-danger scoring chance percentage.  (Stats naturalstattrick.com).

Those stats include the time spent under Babcock and include a six game losing streak.

Those team stats should guarantee you a playoff spot, but unfortunately the Toronto Maple Leafs goaltending is ranked 23rd.

It’s not as sexy as yelling about the general manager’s philosophy, but the fact is, the Leafs are significantly out-performing their goaltending and that’s a really good sign for the future.

They may not be the greatest team defensively, but they are built to trade chances, and they’re very successful at it – they come out ahead of the opposition in every single way we have to measure team performance.

They are also the highest scoring team, and have the best power-play since they hired Sheldon Keefe.

If the Leafs can put up top-of-the-league stats while playing every game shorthanded, and while learning a new system, shouldn’t that suggest that when things inevitably start going their way, that they will be extremely good?

Look, there is absolutely no excuse for last night’s game, but the fact is, those things happen.  We definitely shouldn’t be looking to make massive changes every time we get a result we don’t like.

Yeah, it was disgusting, but the Leafs are the 7th youngest team in the league and in order to win, you’ve got to learn to lose. That’s one hockey cliche I actually believe in.

This will make the Leafs a stronger team.  They’ve got the assets and cap space to add before tomorrow’s deadline.

But they should have the same plan today as they had Friday.

They need to stay the course.

Objectively, if you evaluate the work of Kyle Dubas, he has done an excellent job, and his job security should be 100%.

The Leafs core is crazy talented.  The team is on a path towards excellence and some bad results don’t change that.

I have never seen the Leafs ice a better team, and I believe 100% in Shanahan and Dubas’ vision.

They need the courage, time and patience to stay the course.  The numbers say they are on the right track.  The recent results may cause doubt, but the entire reason that Dubas will be successful in the NHL is because he understands  that the #1 thing that derails most plans is chasing results.

Stay. The. Course.