The Toronto Maple Leafs Stayed the Course – Now What ?

Jul 13, 2020; Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas (left) and president Brendan Shanahan (right) during a NHL workout at the Ford Performance Centre. Mandatory Credit: John E. Sokolowski-USA TODAY Sports
Jul 13, 2020; Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas (left) and president Brendan Shanahan (right) during a NHL workout at the Ford Performance Centre. Mandatory Credit: John E. Sokolowski-USA TODAY Sports
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The Toronto Maple Leafs “stayed the course” and now there’s another seven months until the playoffs start.  Does anyone care about the regular season anymore? Should they?

The Toronto Maple Leafs are about to embark on another regular season with the same core of players who have lost six times in a row in the first round of the NHL playoffs.

Now the first thing I should probably point out here is that the definition of insanity is not doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. That little cliché isn’t the definition of anything, and in fact comes from a Narcotics Anonymous pamphlet printed up in the 1970s.

Expecting different results with the same team is actually not insane at all – it’s the mathematically correct thing to do.

The reason?

This team has never lost for the reasons it’s critics have put forward.  They have only lost when their biggest strength failed them.   That is no reason to change.  They didn’t, and we are lucky they didn’t, because most teams would have.

Let’s dig into the details behind this hypothesis I am putting forward.