Criticism of Toronto Maple Leafs Press Conference Absolutely Bizarre

The Toronto Maple Leafs held a press conference yesterday.

Toronto Maple Leafs team President Brendan Shanahan, along with team GM Kyle Dubas, faced the media yesterday after yet another first round loss.

The Leafs will not be firing anyone, and they are not keen to make changes, other than those which will be demanded by the salary cap.

This is a logical response to a very successful season in which the Leafs finished 4th overall despite the 27th best goaltending (outperforming your goaltending is one of the biggest signs of future success it is possible to have in hockey).

The team is on the verge of winning, and could very well have already won if not for bad luck.

But that doesn’t matter to some, they are only out for blood.  They demand a false sense of accountability and do not have the best interest of the team or its fans in mind – they just want to write about how they always knew this wouldn’t work (even though it’s clearly working).

Why the Toronto Maple Leafs Are Right, and Their Critics Wrong

The fact is that in the NHL, winning is very random.   The league has a salary cap, the teams are closely matched, and hockey is a game where, even under the best of circumstances, the best team doesn’t always win.

In the face of this set-up, all you can do is put out the best team you can, and keep trying until you get it right.  Like the Capitals, you might keep trying and failing for so long that you happen to win it during one of your weakest years.  That’s the NHL.

The Leafs got a bad matchup when they drew the back-to-back champs, and while they lost, they essentially lost a coin-flip – they didn’t get outplayed, they didn’t fail to show up, and they easily played well enough to win.

If you divorce emotion from the process, it is self-evident that the odds of winning are much better if you come back with the same team instead of making fundamental changes.

This team came 4th overall, and based on the make-up and age of the roster, is likely to come back and finish similarly next season.

I completely understand the tendency of people to get emotional and demand change, but they never seem to consider one main thing:

For over 50 years, every time the Toronto Maple Leafs failed and the media noise got loud enough, they “held people accountable” and changed management and coaches.

This didn’t turn out to be the correct move one single time.

In all the years of public accountability, in all the years of firing people because they didn’t get the correct random outcome, the team never won the Stanley Cup.

So since we had 50 + years of doing what every single other team always does, what is so bad about giving the guys who built the best roster (objectively speaking) in team history another chance?

It’s not like the Toronto Maple Leafs of 2022 failed to meet the high standards set by Leafs teams past.  They might have failed miserably yet again, but they were still better than all the other loser teams we’ve put up with for the last however many years old you are reading this.

Everyone is entitled to whatever opinion they want to have, but I just find it bizarre that these guys are getting so rabid about the “low standard” of the Toronto Maple Leafs, as if firing people every two or three years has ever actually worked out.

From a mathematical standpoint, it’s a no-brainer to stick with the process. Let’s just realize that firing people is cathartic, and the “new management” period with any new team is fun and helps massage of the pain of losing.  But it doesn’t really help you win any faster – if anything, it sets you back since you are starting over.

But hiring a new GM is an “easy-answer” and easy answers usually don’t work out. The Leafs failed, but it only makes sense to let intelligent people learn from their failures.   If you take the emotions out of the equation, it would seem down right idiotic to fire the President, GM or Coach.

As usual, the critics of the Leafs seem to be completely emotional and deaf to reason.  Sure, we’d all feel better with some bloodletting, but the best thing for this franchise is stability.