Toronto Maple Leafs Beg For Change After Disaster vs Ottawa

The Toronto Maple Leafs are broken.

The MLSE Board that runs the Toronto Maple Leafs clearly screwed up when they allowed Kyle Dubas to leave the organization rather than giving him Brendan Shanahan’s job.

Forced to make one of the easiest decisions in hockey history, the board choked and went with the current President.

He in turn hired a stooge who wouldn’t threaten his job, and that stooge in turn went with name-brand over analytics, and perception over reality. 

For example, Treliving spoke about toughness, but all he did was add an enforcer and the skilled son of an enforcer because REAVES and DOMI headlines made it seem like this team was going to get tough.

Instead, it was an obviously superficial move designed to impress their dumbest fans.

A second example of perception over reality is paying big money for name-brand players with the statistical profiles of replacement players.   Shortly after learning that the Leafs spent $11 million on Reaves, Kampf, Klingberg, and Domi that they could have signed 4 x players to the league-minimum and had enough left over to buy another superstar.

And if I can see that, with the resources I have, what the ____ are the Toronto Maple Leafs even doing?

Toronto Maple Leafs Beg For Change After Disaster in Ottawa

The Toronto Maple Leafs deserved to lose in Tampa, and got lucky with a fun win.  That means that last night should  have been their sixth loss in a row.

Doesn’t matter though, cause five out of six is pretty bad.

The Leafs now have a losing record, and are just four points out of the Eastern Conference Basement.

And even if they were to dump Klingberg and Reaves today, which they should, they are still stuck with Kampf, Giordano, and Domi.  They still don’t have any defensive depth, nor do they have any elite players.

They still have a coach who lost at least two chances at a win in the last week by putting Ryan Reaves on the ice at bizarre times.  Once after a goal, and once while John Klingberg was on the ice with him.

Last night’s game was a complete joke, the overall stats look OK, but in reality, William Nylander, John Tavares, and the under-rated (somehow, at least for today) Tyler Bertuzzi had one hell of a game. Unfortunately, having to put guys like Klingberg, Reaves or Giordano on the ice completely ruined the game.

The Toronto Maple Leafs remain inches from being a great team.  They have a great core, and a lot of great prospects.  They are currently stuck with a horrible blue-line and a 4th line that saps the team of it’s strength.

These aren’t insurmountable problems, even in-season.  The biggest issue is that even if you deal with  Reaves and Klinberg, you still have a team with no elite defenseman, and one that still has to play Giordano, McCabe and Kampf.

It will be interesting to see what Shanahan does to try and save his job, because this season, and his career as an NHL executive are circling the drain.