Toronto Maple Leafs Fans, Media and Coach Way Too on Edge

The Toronto Maple Leafs frustration at being unable to get by the first round seems to be making everyone insane.  That is the only explanation for the way people are acting one week into the season.

The Toronto Maple Leafs absolutely dominated the Coyotes, and the coach lashed out instead of protecting his guys.  This doesn’t help.  He should be insulating them, not contributing to the stupidity.

The usual suspects are screaming at their cameras and crying into their keyboards while the media fans the flames, hoping for a complete meltdown.

And for what?

The team is off to a great start where they should be 4-0 and saying “Our record is a bit better than we deserve, but it’s early days yet and we’ll start to figure it out.”

Their record is fine and should be better. They’ve used practically a different goalie in every game, their special teams are acting like it’s October, which it is, and their team is taking a while to gel.  All perfectly normal.

The roster still features a ton of stars, some of the best players ever, and hasn’t even really started featuring Sandin (missed camp) Liljegre (injured) or Robertson (yet to play).

Everyone should chill. The team is awesome.  They recently finished 4th overall, then beat the NHL’s best team on merit (though they did not advance).   There is nothing to be mad about that isn’t at least two years old.

Everyone is just way too on edge.  (stats naturalstattrick.com).

The Toronto Maple Leafs Are In Good Shape

Auston Matthews has the best statistics in the NHL after four games and has one goal, and the Leafs are barely winning his minutes.  Their special teams will get better for sure.  They should be four and oh despite that, so the way people are acting is kind of scary.

Take Keefe for example. I thought it was dumb that anyone would suggest firing him, but he seems lost if he’s going to publicly meltdown four games into the season when the only real problem is a short sample size.

What’s he doing calling out his best players when the following is true:

His top two lines have pretty much dominated.

Three of the players he’s talking about are at or over a point-per-game.

The player who isn’t, has won 71% of his minutes and should probably personally have five or six goals already.

Keefe was just annoyed that his team wasn’t getting any shots through, but it’s hard to complain when they are implementing the game plan perfectly and the puck is just not hitting the net.

Then the power play goes four times in a row without a shot.

Its the kind of thing that drives you crazy, but which isn’t going to happen frequently enough to be considered a real problem.

I think everyone needs to take three steps back, realize this roster is great, that bad luck occurs, and that time will fix every single problem this team has.

There is no reason fans and media of the team with the best roster in the league should be so on edge four games into the season. It’s just a game.  It’s supposed to be fun.