The Toronto Maple Leafs Can’t Win Every Single Game

The Toronto Maple Leafs can’t win every single game they play.

It might seem like they can, since they have the NHL’s best coach, GM, player and roster, but the Toronto Maple Leafs are sometimes going to lose.  Even to an inferior opponent.

Case in point: last night. The Leafs shouldn’t have any trouble with a team like the Vancouver Canucks who are stuck with a terrible GM and going nowhere.  But they lost, because hockey is a crazy game where the best team playing the worst team will still lose three or four times out of ten.

Coming into last night’s game, the Leafs were looking for their fifth straight win, after beating the Oiler three times and allowing just a single goal.  Considering their starting goalie played just one of those games, I think a 4-1 record is more than acceptable.

Not only that, but after three in four nights, the Leafs were clearly a tired team last night.  You could tell because they dominated the first period and then seemed to have trouble the rest of the game.  (all stats naturalstattrick.com).

Toronto Maple Leafs vs Canucks

The Leafs were the better team last night and probably deserved to win.  If you look at the shot charts, you can clearly see that Toronto had a bunch of shots from in close, while they limited Vancouver from doing the same thing.

The Leafs had six more scoring chances on the night, and were pretty much beaten by a goalie.  Not helping matters, the Canucks took just two minor penalties.

The next game is tomorrow and it’s also against the Vancouver Canucks. The Leafs will most likely win this one, even though winning every game is impossible.

One interesting note of news, courtesy Yahoo, is that the Kyle Dubas just became the fastest GM to win 100 games with the team.  This isn’t surprising as the Leafs have had a litany of awful general managers throughout their history.

Other than Pat Quinn and the first time Cliff Fletcher was here, it’s hard to think of a Leafs GM who wasn’t complete garbage.  Lou Lamoriello, John Ferguson, Dave Nonis and Brian Burke were collectively so bad it’s hard to imagine other teams actually hired them afterwards. 

Kyle Dubas is clearly the best GM in the team’s modern history dating back to the original six expansion. He signed all four of the Leafs big name players and has proven to be the only GM in team history capable of withstanding the pressure to do dumb things suggested by the Toronto Media.

So congrats on this accomplishment and here’s looking forward to tomorrow’s game.