Toronto Maple Leafs: How the NHL’s Best Young Team Supposedly Failed
By James Tanner
The Culmination of Frustration Part 1
The crazy thing about how poorly the Toronto Maple Leafs and their GM are currently viewed across the league is how they’d be viewed if they beat Montreal. Had that happened (and it was EXTREMELY probable) they would have coasted past the Jets and likely farther on the basis of Matthews and Marner’s corrections to the norm. (more on that in a second).
Even a loss to the Knights in the semis combined with how close the Leafs came to the President’s Trophy would have been a vindication of Kyle Dubas and his management style, and more specifically, his cap management.
The Leafs had a shot at the President’s Trophy heading in to the final weekend of the season. Had they won their last two games, and had a combination of other teams lost , the Leafs would have finished first.
But check this: they still almost managed that despite 1) Auston Matthews going two weeks without being able to shoot 2) Freddie Andersen playing half the games and posting a sub-.900 save percentage and 3) their power-play going from the best in the league for the first half, to almost the worst in the league for the second half.
If Andersen and the PP are just average, the Leafs win the President’s Trophy in a walk. Sure everyone would then say it was because of a weak division, but realistically the NHL is so full of parity that what division you’re in makes only a slight difference.
The Combination of Factors
A 32 year old GM enters an old-boys club and decides to do things differently than anyone else ever has, in one of the most conservative sports there is. Not only does he employ a different strategy in drafting, but he does it in personnel, on-ice, and the salary cap.
Additionally, he replaces an absolute legend (forgetting for a second how bad that legend performed) while beating out Mark Hunter for the job (a fan-favorite due to his embracing of old-time hockey).
To top it off, he clashes with the already installed legendary coach and replaces him with his old friend, a rookie NHL coach with, let’s just say, not the best reputation as a player and person.
This “Boy Wonder” (whether fair or not) has a reputation of hating physical hockey and embracing statistical analysis, two very unpopular things with the vast majority of NHL fans.
He immediately signs his core players to massive contracts, and while the players do in fact live up to those deals, they don’t win anything in the playoffs. (Note: this strategy should be vindicated by now due to the Leafs regular season performance, but in North American Sports we only count the random end-of-the-year tournament as meaningful, despite it being way less statistically meaningful).