Toronto Maple Leafs Win the NHL Off-Season by Playing It Cool

The Toronto Maple Leafs have had a pretty low-key summer.

The Toronto Maple Leafs lost Zach Hyman, and other than that, the biggest news about their summer is not the guys they acquired, but how little they did.

Call it the drawbacks of already being a contender, but the Leafs have had the most boring summer I can ever remember them having.  And, considering how many NHL teams were actively stupid in the last month, this is a good thing.

The Leafs made one interesting trade, and immediately gave away the player they traded for.  They  didn’t have a first round pick in the draft, and didn’t trade back into the action.

In free-agency, they signed some longshots, but didn’t do anything you could really term as “exciting” unless, of course, you happen to be related to Michael Bunting.

Toronto Maple Leafs Improve Just By Playing It Cool

Now, none of this is necessarily a problem.  The Leafs may have failed to advance in the playoffs, but the three main reasons why 1) Matthews and Marner didn’t score despite other-worldly underlying numbers,  2) Tavares injured  3) Despite top notch personnel, their power-play was a dud are not really problems you can (or even have try to) correct.  These are mostly luck-based problems that will work themselves out in the long run.

The team was competing for the President’s Trophy until the final weekend of the season.  They entered the playoffs with one of the biggest probabilities to win over a first round opponent that we’ve seen since computer modeling was accurate enough to care about.   You can complain about the results, add them to 50 other years of unrelated failing, and be really negative about the team, that’s your prerogative.  Just expect them to surprise you next season when they’re the best team in hockey.

The team has scoring, defense, goaltending, depth at every position; they’ve got leadership, experience, toughness, skill and great coaching.

So long story short: there wasn’t really much to do this offseason.  The team is already great.  You can’t fill out your team with enough prospects *yet* to free up enough money for another star player, so you’ve got to go bargain hunting.

People see this as a bad thing, but it isn’t.  Look at virtually every contract in the NHL that has been handed out in the last few weeks – other than the longshots that the Leafs and a few other teams made, they’re pretty much all stupid deals that hurt the teams that signed them – the Edmonton Oilers appear to be managed by a random (possibly illiterate) fan.

The Toronto Maple Leafs quiet summer just keeps paying off as idiotic teams make terrible decisions that make the Leafs better by comparison.  The Leafs main competition for first place in the NHL – Colorado, Tampa, Las Vegas – all made them selves worse. Up and commers like Edmonton, Philly, New York and Chicago made decisions so painfully stupid an objective review of their moves would read like hyperbolic vitriol.

Honest question: Which NHL team improved the most this summer?  New Jersey, probably.  I liked their moves.  Buffalo and Arizona made smart moves, but they won’t pay off this season.  Teams  like the Leafs who avoided the stupidest trade market of all-time, and who let their overpriced 30 year-olds walk probably faired the best.

The Toronto Maple Leafs had a quiet summer and by doing so, won the NHL off-season.