Toronto Maple Leafs News Week in Review

The Toronto Maple Leafs, like most other NHL teams, didn’t have any games this week.

The Tampa Bay Lightning and the Dallas Stars will play for the Championship, and the Toronto Maple Leafs will continue to prepare for the upcoming draft and free-agency period.

Overall, it wasn’t too exciting of a week for the Leafs, with the strange summer playoffs winding down and NHL news few and far between.  There was at least one good development: the New York Islanders lost.

Not that I care one way or another about the Islanders, but given that the Leafs took the Islanders franchise player and gave them a 70 year old general manger,  I’m sick of hearing about how great the Islanders are despite the lopsided trade, and so I’m glad they lost.

Toronto Maple Leafs Week in Review

Speaking of the Islanders, the most ridiculous thing of the week was the NHL General Managers naming Lou Lamoriello the “GM of the Year,” which is an incredibly stupid award to even have in the first place.

Some hockey teams make moves for the now, and others make moves for the future, meanwhile, most moves aren’t even assessable for years after their made, so why bother having a trophy?

Lamoriello has made countless terrible moves since joining the Islanders, but his team has been successful anyways, due to timely goaltending and Barrie Trotz.  In fact, the Islanders were the fourth worst team in the NHL from December to March, and were almost certainly going to miss the playoffs if the season finished as scheduled.

Meanwhile, the Leafs lost in fluky play-in series and didn’t even make the playoffs, despite being a near lock under regular circumstances.  But sure, give an award to Lamoriello despite the fact that not only did his team get preposterously lucky, but the Leafs spent all year cleaning up the mess he left them.

Oh well.  In other news, talks apparently aren’t going well with Alex Pietrangelo in St. Louis, which shouldn’t be surprising, as he is the first big name player to negotiate a contract since the NHL’s economy was completely revamped by Covid.

Since it seems like Pietrangelo will hit the pen market, everyone in Toronto is going nuts, despite the fact that the Leafs shouldn’t really have any interest, due to the player’s age.   I don’t think the Toronto Maple Leafs should or will sign him.

That is pretty much it for the weekly news, other than the fact that the Leafs hired an assistant coach (Manny Malhotra) and thus won’t be brining in a celebrity assistant coach, which was never a good idea anyways.

To sum up: No Boudreau, no Pietrangelo, and no reason to give awards to GMs, let alone the one you can make a fairly good argument for being among the worst in the league over the last few years.