The Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Give Less Time to Legends

Toronto Maple Leafs and the Tampa Bay Lightning

People talk a lot about how the Leafs have changed their philosophy, but I don’t think it’s true.  Three years ago they traded for Jake Muzzin.  Kyle Dubas’ first ever trade was for Zach Hyman.  Last year the Leafs brought in Kyle Clifford.  This year they brought in Wayne Simmonds.  This seems to be very consistent – find checking players, but only if they can also play.

Last year they signed Jason Spezza.  This year it was Thornton.  I like all these moves, in a vacuum.  But a roster with Thornton, Spezza, Simmonds and Bogosian has too many guys filling the same role.  Not one of these guys is good enough to play if there name is Nic Petan (who brings the same value, possibly better as all of the above from a strictly on-ice hockey point of view).

The Leafs started the season by having Joe Thornton on the top line, which I thought was a terrible,  terrible idea.  I soon shut-up about it though, because for a while it was very effective.

I like Thornton and I like Simmonds.  What I don’t like is the idea that leadership and experience somehow trump talent – which is an idea as baked into the fabric of hockey as wearing skates. I think this is something that is easy applied after the fact, and has almost no basis in reality.

For example, every contending team in NHL history has made similar adds to what Tampa did last year (i.e instead of making a splashy big-name trade, they brought in some depth, character types) but those teams weren’t coming off a big upset that people (erroneously) credited to not having a “playoff type roster.”

Now, when people talk about how the Lightning finally won the Cup it is always because they acquired some grinders and vets.  This is a cheap, annoying,  untrue narrative of what happened.  Remember, hockey is a game where underdogs have a way-higher-than-than-they-should chance of beating great teams.

Tampa was,  (adjusted for era) arguably the best regular season team ever in 2019.  They subsequently lost to a garbage Columbus team.  They didn’t deserve to. They weren’t shut-down, or incapable of playing “playoff hockey,” they just got out-goalied.  Just the exact same as the Leafs last summer.

The next year Tampa added Blake Coleman, Barclay Goodrow, and Zach Bogosian, and won the Cup without Steve Stamkos (injured).  The narrative gets really stupid when you think about it, because there is no way they were better without Stamkos than when they lost to the Blue Jackets, but that doesn’t matter when the only thing people care about are “Lost to Columbus” and “Won Stanley Cup.”

Realistically, they had a better chance of winning the year they got bounced in the first round, but the narrative doesn’t care.  So of course when the Leafs add Thornton, Simmonds, Bogosian and Foligno everyone thinks the same thing is happening.

It’s not.  And if the Leafs win the cup this year it will be in spite of Wayne Simmonds and Joe Thornton, not because adding them was the magical solution to put them over the top.