The Toronto Maple Leafs President and GM met with the media last week following the team’s undeserved loss to the Blue Jackets in the NHL’s playoff play-in round.
Toronto Maple Leafs President Brendan Shanahan took on the role of placating telling the media by telling them what they wanted to hear, giving B.S answers about needing more “compete level and grit.”
As if. The team competed hard enough, and was plenty gritty. They shot under 2% over five games, something that has about a one-in-one-thousand chance of happening. Nothing gritty about goaltending or bad luck.
A complete fluke that only takes on the appearance of a problematic occurrence when viewed under the worst possible light on purpose.
Toronto Maple Leafs GM Shows a Ton of Grit
Sure the Leafs lost four times in the first round.
Once as a group of rookies who over-achieved. The second time they had a trio of 20 year old and the husk of a failed Brian Burke experiment take the Cup Champion Bruins to seven games.
Next, they outplayed Boston in year three, losing when an improbable Nazem Kadri second playoff suspension left them short-handed. Still, it was a gritty effort that deserved praise and got none due to the result.
Finally, this year they played well enough to win five straight games despite a five month layoff, bad ice, bad officiating, and two of the hottest goalies in NHL history.
And so Brendan tells you what you want to hear.
And Kyle, he has to sit there and take it. He has to appear contrite and act like he failed despite the fact that he knows damn well he didn’t. He stuck to his process and the process worked, but the result was unfortunate, and despite it being obvious, no one mentions it.
Can you blame the guy for being frustrated? He is supposed to sit there and act like he somehow failed, despite the fact that his team, under his new coach, came back from the dead to qualify for the playoffs (under normal circumstances).
Despite getting the 25th best goaltending in the NHL, the Leafs, under Keefe, finished 8th overall. They played half of those games without Morgan Rielly and 16 of them with their top two defensemen out of the lineup.
Under those circumstances the 8th overall should inspire hope that in the future, when anomalies are corrected, the Leafs would be near the top of the league.
So a math guy is supposed to ignore this while facing cliched questions that are so far removed from reality that they should be embarrassing to anyone with a brain.
And the Leafs had one of the gutsiest performances in NHL history in game four, but since that was followed up with a 40 save shutout that also featured three goal posts, we are supposed to pretend it didn’t happen.
Personally, I gained so much respect for Dubas when he flat out said that he wouldn’t move his core. For years the Leafs have been haunted by the fact that an overbearing media all but forces management to chase the dragon.
By which I mean make constant short-term overreactions to the results. The entire point of analytics is to avoid this. It is to look at the big picture and understand that if you lose on a 2% fluke, it doesn’t require a reaction.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are clearly on the right track. The math that NHL teams should concentrate their cap spending to a few superstars is indisputable. The math that suggests teams will be more successful by focusing on skill and scoring is just as strong.
The NHL is a conservative league that doesn’t do well with innovation. All you have to do is look at the reaction Dubas is getting to know why people don’t try to innovate very much – if you don’t win instantly, you won’t get much of a chance.
I really honestly hope the people in charge of Shanahan and Dubas have the guts to stand up to the pressure and keep doing the right thing in the face of some very bad, completely dishonest criticism.
The fact is, hockey is a game of margins and who “deserves” to win is often very different from who actually wins. But once the game is over, everyone seems to forget that. The fact is though, if you “deserve” to win more often than not, you will, over time, get the results you seek.
The best thing the Leafs can do is move on with their plan. That means upgrading where they can, but sticking to their core players and their core beliefs.
The usual suspects were taking pot shots at Dubas this week, upset that he had the guts to tell the truth and not just say the politic thing.
Yes he’s sticking with his core. Correctly.
He thinks the criticism of a dominant player who just happened to not score that much was idiotic. He’s right.
He’s right to be annoyed about questions of grit when he recently acquired both Clifford and Muzzin and grit played absolutely no role in why they lost.
And its understandable to be frustrated when you have to answer ridiculous questions from people you’re almost sure know better, and who won’t acknowledge any of the good things or solid progress you’ve made.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have arguably the NHL’s best roster. They lost a series in which their goalie saved over 93% of the shots, in which they were the better team for five out of five games.
Results don’t always work out, and its crazy that no one in the media will admit that. I for one love our new rock and roll badass GM.
What I like even better is him answering questions with dignity and honesty, and then seeing reporters call him “petulant” with no trace of irony.
The media can have all the fun that they want right now, but Dubas is building an annual powerhouse and he is going to be very successful in this league for a long time. The Toronto Maple Leafs couldn’t be in better hands.
This team is going to be special.