Re-Capping a Crazy Week in the Land of the Toronto Maple Leafs

This was a pretty crazy week in the history of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The Toronto Maple Leafs haven’t played since the middle of March, but that didn’t stop the team from making near constant news over the last week.

First, last Friday, Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun caused a ton of controversy by revealing that Auston Matthews had contracted Covid 19.

This was not only just absolutely awful news, but the ensuing controversy about how much privacy a player is entitled to snowballed into an interesting debate about journalistic ethics.

In my view, there is nothing to be gained for anyone but the reporter in releasing such information, so I think it is, at best, an ethics violation and at worst, completely reprehensible act of selfishness.

Toronto Maple Leafs Week in Review

The Auston Matthews news is horrible, and we wish him the best.  This isn’t a normal injury, and hockey isn’t our concern here.  We just wish Matthews all the best and hope he and his family are doing well.

Besides Matthews, the other big thing going on was the Hall of Fame, and the Hub City reality show.

The Hall of Fame, predictably, turned into an absolute farce, as the old-boys club (literally and figuratively) rewarded two of their own (for no reason, and about 30 years after they both retired) while ignoring tons of better candidates.

Jerome Iginla was a shoe-in, but Hossa wasn’t a first ballot player, the other two guys don’t deserve it, and the fact that they didn’t enshrine Jennifer Botterill seems to be a complete indictment of the committee.

As to the Toronto Maple Leafs, Alex Mogilny, Curtis Joseph and to a lesser extent Tomas Kaberle were all passed over.

In the case of Mogilny, it’s been 11 years since he retired and it makes absolutely no sense that he wasn’t chosen.

Finally, we come to the Hub City, the lottery that no one should want to win.  The NHL keeps eliminating teams like its some kind of game, but it makes no sense.

There won’t be fans in the stands, so who cares where they play?  Las Vegas seems like it will be chosen, despite the hellish statistics coming out of the state of Nevada, and Toronto is still in the running despite being the most dangerous Canadian location.

If the NHL must play, why aren’t they isolating their entire league in a northern town with few to no cases?

History may ask again later.

Oh and then there is the draft lottery. If the Toronto Maple Leafs should somehow lose to the Blue Jackets, they could still end up winning the NHL draft lottery and picking first overall.

That all goes down tonight.