Happy 4th Anniversary to the Toronto Maple Leafs and John Tavares

The Toronto Maple Leafs are celebrating an anniversary today.

It is the four year anniversary of the Toronto Maple Leafs signing John Tavares, and I personally think it’s a day for celebration.

True, the Leafs haven’t yet won the Stanley Cup, but the four years with Tavares in the lineup have been about the best four years in Leafs history.  It’s not all about winning.

The team is competitive every single night, and they have been a top team every year of the Tavares era.  What’s not to like?

I definitely get annoyed by the way people portray success as binary.  The Leafs last four years, culminating in the Auston Matthews Hart Trophy and the team record for wins and points have been absolutely amazing.

Mitch Marner, Morgan Rielly, Auston Matthews, William Nylander and John Tavares have spoiled the fans of the Leafs into thinking we actually deserve to win.   If you remember the previous 50 years of failure, when the team didn’t even have the expectation of maybe winning , and there wasn’t even a chance of being disappointed, so I think the Tavares era has been relatively awesome.

John Tavares and the Toronto Maple Leafs 4 Year Anniversary

In his four years as Captain, Tavares has played 280 games, and scored 274 points. 

That is the model of consistency. Injuries and shortened seasons aside, he’s pretty much been a 30 goal, 80 point centre in each of his seasons  in Toronto.

That first year he rocked an incredible 47 and it’s not impossible that with a little luck he gets back to such heights.  But even if he doesn’t, he is unlikely to decline much with time because he has never relied on speed and physicality to be successful.

Is a move to the wing in store?  Maybe, maybe not.  Players in the NHL have no control over what their goalie does, and last season, the goalies did brutally when Tavares was on the ice.

For 79 games, the Leafs goalies failed to post a 900 save percentage when Tavares played, thus making him seem much worse than he actually was.  So, while a move to the wing might be smart, I think that would be more about finding out if Marner can be an elite centre than demoting Tavares.

The bad goaltending started people complaining about his defense, which is silly.  He’s never been a good defensive player, but he makes up for it by doing other things well.  John Tavares played in such a way last season that the Leafs were supposed to get 55% of the goals when he was on the ice.  It’s not like his defense is making him a liability – hockey is a game where offense and defense are fluid, and where you can’t be scored on when you have the puck and don’t need to play defense.

That isn’t a player being hurt by his defense, nor one who is in decline.

In an unlucky season, Tavares still scored 27 times, and was still nearly a point-per-game player.  He even scored what should have been the highlight of his career – the series winning goal against the Lightning.

Unfortunately, despite ignoring interference for the better part of six games, the referees that fateful night felt like suddenly enforcing the rules, and called off the goal.

It was an embarrassing humiliation for a league already beset by officiating trouble, and it cost the Leafs the series.

But that doesn’t matter, because John Tavares will return and make up for it next season. Happy fourth anniversary to the captain. I maintain the signing was one of the best things to ever happen to this franchise, and I’d do it again.

The Toronto Maple Leafs regret nothing, nor should they.  John Tavares will one day go down as the best captain in the history of this team, likely the day after he first lifts the Stanley Cup above his head.