That Was Fast: Crybabies, Media Turn on the Toronto Maple Leafs

So much for Toronto being a sophisticated hockey market.  The so-called fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs are out for blood and facts be damned.

You can’t blame the fans, as most of the media covering the Toronto Maple Leafs were clearly waiting for the team to stumble so they could throw out their ice-cold, eight-year-old grievances about how this team is built, and how it’s a “failed experiment.”

Oh I’m sorry, was Ryan O’Reilly not exactly what you had in mind when you said this team needs leadership, defense, and to be tougher to play against? 

Are Noel Acciari, Luke Schenn, and Jake McCabe not playing prominent enough roles for you? 

Toronto Media a Joke

I swear, watching the media turn on the Leafs this week was like watching sports turn to politics before my very eyes.  No longer does reality matter. You just shoe-horn whatever grievance you have and put it out their for the people who already agree with you.

You can say whatever you want about me, but I’ve tried to make sure that one thing I do not do is just tell people what they want to hear.  Unfortunately, in this entitled world, that gets you labeled as a troll, but the fact is, I believe every single thing I ever say.

The Athletic mocked the Matt Murray trade.  But they conveniently ignored the fact that Kyle Dubas bet on 2 goalies for the price of one, and that one worked out and was among the best goalies in the NHL this season.  If. not for the insane play of Linus Ullmark, Ilya Samsonov would at least have a shot at the Vezina.

The Leafs smartly played the odds, so the criticism has all the credibility of the Toronto Sun critiquing the PM.

The Toronto Star said it was a failed experiment? Really guys? One, it’s not even over yet.  Two, it’s a pretty well-rounded team that arguably has the NHL’s best roster.  Three, there is really nothing experimental about this team anymore, they pretty much conformed to the norm.  And finally, and most importantly, they didn’t so much “fail” as get goalied.

Toronto should have won games one and two on merit.  A fact everyone ignores, despite constantly undercutting their gutsy performance against Tampa. (And props to non-Leafs Media Member Meghan Chayka, tweet above, for operating in the realm of reality).

Sure, game three was a bad game for them, but they are such a solid team that on their worst day, a day when their stars were bad, their goalie got hurt and they weren’t awarded a single power-play, they still made it to overtime and gave themselves a shot at a victory.

Doing nothing differently, this series could easily be 3-0 Leafs, which is what makes all this shoehorned, outdated, lousy, grudgey, axe-grinding BS ring so hollow.

The Toronto Maple Leafs, and Their Fans Deserve Better

This version of the Toronto Maple Leafs takes so much unnecessary crap because they had the gall to give the GM job to a 31 year-old upstart and not a grizzled vet who had been fired from three other organizations first.   It all stems from that.

To make matters worse, said GM doesn’t really listen to the media and they no longer are the de facto GM they’ve been for decades when they were able to manufacture moves that the team would make via non-stop pressure.

It. Is. Pathetic.

This team , whether they comeback in this series or not, deserves our respect and admiration. They’ve finally slayed the dragon and advanced to round two.  They have four years of being the best team in Toronto history, positing a + .600 points-percentage and flirting with the President’s Trophy every year.

There is a randomness to the playoffs that people completely ignore when they start to talk about Kyle Dubas’ Toronto Maple Leafs.

Additionally, they not only beat the team that went to the Cup Finals three years in a row, but they also should be up, minimum, 2-1 in this series right now.   They’ve given a great effort and in fact, Game Three wasn’t even as bad as people are making it out to be.  Fact is, finesse players never look great when they don’t score.

Sergei Bobrovsky got hot at the exact right time, and it brought all the crybabies, all the entitled whiners, and all the grudge holding “analysts” out of their caves to complain about the same things they’ve been saying for nearly a decade.

Things I can’t respect because they aren’t true. They are just shoehorning what they’ve been saying all along into the current situation, even though none of it applies.  The Leafs aren’t an experiment. They actually do have experience and leadership.  They are one of the toughest teams in the league.  They hit a lot.  They have a history of comebacks.  Nylander has been their best player.

In my opinion, no matter what happens from here on out, the Leafs season was a great success.  You can’t help it if you get goalied or hit a ridiculous number of posts and crossbars.

This team deserves better than they are getting.  Hockey is a sport where luck is a major factor, and the best team doesn’t always win. The Leafs are a much better team than Florida and have out played them for two out of three games.

I personally think that this should matter when analyzing what happened, and that a “win or else” results based approach to analysis is silly, immature, regressive and annoying.