The Toronto Maple Leafs Should Have Fired Sheldon Keefe

The Toronto Maple Leafs made the mistake of firing Kyle Dubas.   We can all admit that was a short-sighted and stupid move that will hurt the team for years.

But why did the Toronto Maple Leafs not use that opportunity to at least make some kind of change to the actual team?

It is inexplicable that they are bringing back Sheldon Keefe, who they will predictably fire whenever the team hits its first four-game losing streak anyway.

This has been the summer of mistakes for Brendan Shanahan and co.

The Toronto Maple Leafs Should Have Fired Sheldon Keefe

Sheldon Keefe has a very strong regular season record, and he presumably has learned on the job and can put some of those lessons to work in the future.

It’s entirely possible that he gets better.

But so far, he stinks.

The Leafs play a high-possession game that is boring as hell, rarely results in rushes and doesn’t take advantage of the high-flying talent the ex-GMs have assembled.

The Leafs do not take many penalties, which means they are always near the bottom of the league in power-plays.

They also do not score very much on rebounds, which is probably the easiest way to score.

And worst of all, Keefe makes terrible lineup decisions.

Instead of building familiarity and an identity, he experimented so much after the trade deadline that it bordered on ridiculous.

He even dressed an 11/7 lineup during a playoff game.

Keefe has absolutely failed to develop any young talent during his time as coach.

He never put Rasmus Sandin or Timothy Liljegren in a position to succeed.  In fact,  despite Liljegren putting up some of the best numbers on the team for two years, Keefe benched him and destroyed his (Liljegren’s) confidence.

Keefe resisted putting Ryan O’Reilly at 3C, and he dressed a bottom-six completely devoid of offense (though this is partly on the GM).

He is bad at making lineups, and he isn’t creative at all.

Worse, in the Playoffs Keefe stuck with the McCabe / Brodie pairing even though it was slow as pitch from the get-go and everyone with a brain new it wouldn’t work.  It didn’t.

To make matters worse, Keefe played Luke Schenn on the top pairing with Morgan Rielly even though Luke Schenn is a borderline NHL/AHL player who is extremely slow and horrible at puck-handling.

The Leafs dressed one of the worst puck-handling players in the NHL on their top scoring line for much of the playoffs and then lost by four goals over five games when their best players went ice cold.

They might have scored more goals if the play didn’t end every single time it went to the right point.  Sure, Schenn was good defensively, but who cares? The Leafs defense was never a problem and hasn’t been since Mike Babcock was fired.

Bringing back Sheldon Keefe when Claude Julien was right there is just another horrible decision by Brendan Shanahan.