Toronto Maple Leafs Need to be a Lot Tougher to Play Against

The Toronto Maple Leafs – through the first 15 percent of the season – have not displayed the hard-to-play-against toughness that new general manager Brad Treliving promised upon his arrival.

It seems – for the time being – that Toronto Maple Leafs history has unfortunately repeated itself. This time there are less of the bombastic post-game media tirades that got former GM Brian Burke a one-way ticket out of town.

Even though Treliving’s adjective choices to describe what he would add to the Leafs lineup were bereft of ‘pugnacious’, ‘testosterone’ and ‘truculence’, the additions implemented by Treliving have sorely lacked anything close to those words.

Treliving spent a whopping $16M on forwards Tyler Bertuzzi, Max Domi and Ryan Reaves plus defenseman John Klingberg, who has already been demoted from the top power-play unit and was logging third-pair minutes before Jake McCabe went down and Timothy Liljegren got injured.

Toronto Maple Leafs Need to be a Lot Tougher to Play Against

McCabe has returned to practice and may give the Leafs an able-bodied NHL veteran presence on the blue line within a few games or less.

Liljegren’s high ankle sprain, which was caused by Boston Bruins ultra-pest Brad Marchand, was a glaring sign of just how non-existent any level of belligerent backbone has been on the Leafs roster. Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe hated the muted response by his players to that dirty play.

In other words, the return on investment has been extremely poor. If Treliving was working for a Fortune 500 company, they would have already gone into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and he’d be working feverishly to re-word his resume for a job at a pizza joint.

Those signees have combined for two goals and 10 assists this season. Moreover, the fight they were supposed to bring has not surfaced. Sure, Reaves has dropped the gloves a few times for no reason at all, but the ‘Bore Four’ Treliving illogically inked have yet to make life harder for the opposition.

In fact, Reaves has statistically been one of the worst forwards in the NHL and he has cost the Leafs multiple wins. His minutes desperately should be given to any skater on the Toronto Marlies. Print out their roster and point to one with a pen. Whoever gets circled would instantly improve the Leafs.

It might seem too early to declare them duds, but the feeling around the team is that Treliving won’t give up on his shoddy handy work – even if the solution might be easy. The Marlies – and in specific, Bobby McMann and Nicolas Robertson (called up yesterday) – could provide the secondary scoring that the Leafs sorely miss more than a start-up needs a killer business plan.

Thus far, the ‘Core Four’ in Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, John Tavares and William Nylander have accounted for 26 of the 35 goals the Leafs have scored.

A staggering 74 percent of the offensive output. No team with aspirations to go deep into the playoffs can count on only a handful of players for goals no matter how talented they might be. It hasn’t happened for them in the playoffs to this point and this year’s incarnation of the Leafs has regressed significantly, so don’t expect this group to do any semblance of damage come April 2024.

Teams that advance every spring skate with inspiration. They have each other’s backs and they make life hell on a sheet of ice for every team that dares to come between them and the Stanley Cup.

Has anyone seen anything close to that for the the underperforming Toronto Maple Leafs in the last three weeks? It’s damn tough to find.