Toronto Maple Leafs: Too Bad Canadian Division Isn’t Still Happening
By James Tanner
The Toronto Maple Leafs should have no problem moving back into the Atlantic Division.
The Toronto Maple Leafs won the Canadian Division last season despite not even having a power-play for half a season, and giving half their games to a starter who couldn’t keep his save percentage over .900.
Basically, the Leafs made a mockery of their fellow Canadian teams by coming in first with one hand tied behind their back.
Ironically, the Canadian Division got a bit of a bad rap as an “easy division” but in reality, every other division had between one and three teams who were worse than Ottawa and Vancouver, the worst the North had to offer.
So while it was a bit easier because there were no other top teams to defeat, unlike every other top team in hockey, the Leafs didn’t get to pad their records by playing 8-16 games against joke teams.
Still, after seeing what the other Canadian teams did this summer, it’s a bummer the Leafs have moved back to the Atlantic because almost every team in the North got worse this summer.
Canadian Teams Take a Step Back
Winnipeg was an up-and-coming team who took their most talented player and traded him instead of firing the coach they’ll fire soon anyways. If you can’t weaponize Patrick Laine you don’t deserve an NHL job, and Paul Maurice doesn’t. Hasn’t for years. This team did nothing in the summer and will be easy pickings for teams like the Leafs.
Edmonton is an absolute joke with the worst front office in sports. Everything they did this summer seemed to be about neutralizing the advantage of having McDavid and Draisaitl. What an absolute shame it is to let Ken Holland destroy what could have been. Duncan Keith? The Nurse contract? Signing Tyson Barrie? Pinning their hopes on a 80 year old goalie?
Montreal went to the final in the biggest fluke the NHL has seen in years. Remember what happened to Ottawa when they did the same thing? Montreal apparently doesn’t and their team is worse now and has almost no chance of making the playoffs.
Calgary? Only the absolute idiocy of the three aforementioned teams prevents them from being a league-wide joke. No one knows what their plan is, but they’re stuck in hole because they have too much money tied up in mediocrity. Their defense is brutal and they intentionally made themselves worse by signing Erik Gudbranson to a deal this week.
Vancouver made one of the worst trades in a summer full of them when they brought in the albatross-like contract of Oliver Ekman Larsson. Jim Benning is the worst and this team, like the other five Canadian teams I already talked about, is going absolutely nowhere.
Like I said, the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to miss the Canadian Division because rarely has any division had five teams all get significantly worse over one summer. Sure, the Senators are going to improve, but they’re too young and lack a good enough superstar to overcome their goalie situation.
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The Atlantic Division won’t be a walk in the park (though Detroit and Buffalo will provide easier targets than they had all of last year) but it also won’t be as easy as the newly horrible Canadian teams would have made playing in the North for one more year.
Too bad, it would have been fun!