Top 10 Worst Reasons Given for the Toronto Maple Leafs Slide

The Toronto Maple Leafs have gotten off to a terrible start to the season.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have a record of two wins and five losses through seven games, which is really bad.  It’s not so bad, however, when you realize that this team’s best feature is their offense and the reason they are losing is because they can’t score goals.

If the team was struggling because they couldn’t defend, or because they had an obvious flaw that was being exploited, I would be worried.

But they aren’t and they don’t, so it’s just a luck based skid that absolutely no one should be concerned about.  It kind of sucks, because we’d have all loved a high-flying start to the season, but it really doesn’t matter. Eventually this team will go on a huge winning streak and get back in the race for the division title.

They will enter the playoffs and compete for the Stanley Cup.  That is a given.  So don’t worry too much about things you can’t control, especially when that thing is shooting-percentage and the guy shooting the puck can’t even control it.

So with that fact established, let’s check in on the top ten worst things people have attributed this poor start to.  Note that none of these are made up.

8.  Defense and Goaltending 

At least this one is plausible.   It’s still not true, though.  The Leafs are seventh in the NHL in 5v5 puck possession, meaning it’s hard to score on them because they usually have the puck.  They played seven games, and 10 of their 17 5v5 goals against came in just two of those games.

The team stats are extremely skewed by their two games from last weekend where their goalies played horribly.  Otherwise, they’ve had perfectly fine, even solid, goaltending and defense.

7. Kyle Dubas

All Dubas has done since getting hired is hire a great coach, clean up after Lou Lamoriello, lock up his best players through their primes, turn the Leafs farm system from one of the worst into one of the best, and ice a team that almost won the President’s Trophy and did win a Division Title. 

He can’t help it that the pandemic caused a hard cap, or that Columbus won a five game series six months after the season randomly stopped, or that Montreal beat them with an injured Tavares.   The Leafs should extend his contract and any talk of firing him is indicative of why this team has never won in a league with more than six teams.  You’ve got to see the plan through.

6.  Accountability 

I heard this one on the radio yesterday. Apparently Kyle Dubas’  player-friendly approach to managing is a problem, and the Leafs need some old-school tough-love.   Maybe if they weren’t allowed to have facial hair they’d be better? Or maybe it was ridiculous and disgusting the way in which NHL GMs used to treat players, and Kyle Dubas humanistic approach is both long overdue and way better?  Gee, it’s so hard to decide.

It isn’t causing the Leafs to try less hard and in fact enters us into the really dumb portion of our list.

5. Zach Hyman’s Absence

Remind me again how Zach Hyman’s playoff performances repeatedly led the Leafs to the glory land? Oh what’s that? He’s a second-tier player in the cast and literally anyone in the world would perform well with Connor “I routinely score three points per game” McDavid?

Next.

4.  Jake Muzzin’s “Decline”

So far this year at 5v5 the Leafs have allowed 10 goals while Muzzin is on the ice, while scoring just three.  That is bad, but it ain’t Jake’s fault.

Not only does he play the toughest minutes on the team and go out against all the NHL’s best players, but he has a 50% expected goals rating.  He plays tough minutes, and even though he’s struggling, and even though the sample size is skewed by those two games where they allowed 10 combined 5v5 goals, he’s still at 50% expected goals.

This is an example of how a narrative gets totally blown out of proportion. Jake has been fine.  His on-ice save percentage is 85% which is so bad it would be literally impossible for it to be his fault.

3. Sheldon Keefe and Staff Lack Experience

This would be number one, but the next two are perhaps even worse.  How do people get experience? They succeed enough without it to earn enough time to get it.  Keefe has one of the best wining percentages in NHL history and has won 64 out of 110 games so far in his career.

Keefe isn’t the problem, and his staff isn’t the problem.  He can’t make the Leafs score on a higher percentage of their shots.  But what he has done is guide them through 12 straight playoff games with a positive expected goals rating, which means he’s put his players in a position to succeed.

There is no reason to hang any of the Leafs problems  on Keefe.  There are two types of teams that go on bad losing streaks: teams that need a change, and teams that can’t catch a break.  The Leafs are so clearly the latter that it’s silly to even discuss a coaching change.

2.  The Salary Cap

The Toronto Maple Leafs remain the NHL’s only team without a bad long term contract.  The Leafs are the best team in the NHL at managing the cap, but whenever they lose it suddenly becomes a problem again.  The fact is, they are losing because they have less than two goals per game so far, which is something  that is luck based and won’t last much longer.

Their salary cap structure isn’t preventing them from scoring.

As for depth, well, Jason Spezza, Wayne Simmonds, Pierre Engvall, Michael Bunting,  Rasmus Sandin, Travis Dermott and Timothy Liljegren have all been fantastic so far, and they barely combine to make $6 million.  Clearly a lack of money didn’t prevent them from icing a solid bottom of the roster.

Jack Campbell and William Nylander are paid so cheaply that if you work their average into the Big Three and make it the Big Five, the Toronto Maple Leafs actually have an average salary of their five best players that is in line with all other competitive teams.

How many of those teams also have a trio of $5 million dollar star defenseman? $40 million for four players might sound crazy, but when you add in three defenseman and a goalie, you’re paying $7.25 million each for your eight best players, which is half a million more than what Tampa pays (roughly). Considering the tax breaks they can give their players, that’s not too bad.  I rest my case.

Nothing will ever change the fact that  in the NHL the 100th best player and the worst player in the league are not far enough apart to warrant spending a vastly different sum of money on.  Dumping as much money as you can into star players continues to be the correct way to operate in a salary cap, and a run of bad luck doesn’t change anything about it, other than perception.

The Salary cap complaints are laughable because the Leafs are one of the NHL’s best and deepest teams.  As long as ownership doesn’t panic and pull the plug, time will prove this correct.

1. The Dress Code

The Toronto Maple Leafs now allow players to come to the rink dressed however they want.  The  idea that this is the cause of their losing streak is is the most hilarious thing I’ve ever heard an adult say.

I don’t want to mince words here, so I’ll be very clear:  This doesn’t affect the outcome of games any more than a fan who refuses to wash his lucky jersey.

This is a talking point that isn’t even worthy of a Fox News segment.

Allowing players to be more comfortable and to express themselves might have a positive effect.  It certainly can’t have a negative effect.  It probably doesn’t make a difference one way or the other.

Dress for success? Sure, if you have to superficially impress someone, it will be beneficial to look sharp.  But if you already have a job, and if you are changing before you do it anyways, then it doesn’t matter.

The dress code isn’t affecting anything, and while it’s fun to explore theories, the fact remains that there are hundreds of examples in the history of the NHL of perfectly good teams hitting the skids when they suddenly experience a prolonged shooting or save percentage slump.

There are 208 games previous to the Montreal series where the Toronto Maple Leafs were the third highest scoring team in hockey with the same exact core of players they have now.  208 games are more indicative of both seven (if you count only this season) or 14 (if you count the playoffs).  If you are into gambling, do yourself a favor and bet on the Leafs.