The Toronto Maple Leafs, their fans, and the media are kidding themselves.
The Toronto Maple Leafs may have won five out of their last six games, but they still need to fire everyone involved in managing this organization.
Brendan Shanahan should be fired, along with Brad Treliving and Sheldon Keefe.
The team needs a soft-reset, not a full rebuild, but Shanahan and his cronies are no longer the ones to oversee it.
This was, of course, easy to say when the team was scuffling a few weeks ago, but I meant it then and I mean it now – the Leafs aren’t going anywhere with the current iteration of the team.
Toronto Maple Leafs Should Still Fire Everyone, Despite Win Streak
I realize that most people only care about results, but underneath those results there is so much information that you can use to predict the future.
If a team is regularly having less than 50% puck-possession, if they are being outshot, out-chanced and outscored at 5v5, then their record will eventually match those numbers.
A team like the Leafs, with two decent goalies, and a ton of scoring, can outscore their problems for a while, but no team can do so over a long period.
The Leafs are 12th in 5v5 Corsi (i.e shot-attempt plus/minus which approximates puck possession).
They are 15th in shots-for percentage.
They are 19th in goals-for (they have been scored on more at 5v5 then they have scored).
They are 14th in scoring chances-for percentage.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are 24th out of 32 teams when it comes to the total percentage of high-danger scoring chances in their favor.
Put all these numbers together, and they are 23rd in Expected Goals Percentage (which is the most accurate future predicting stat we have). (stats from naturalstattrick.com).
That is awful.
Since Brendan Shanahan hired Kyle Dubas, the Toronto Maple Leafs were a team all about “process over results” type thinking.
This is the correct way to think about anything.
The challenge with thinking like this is maintaining your poise and objectivity when the results skew either really good or really bad.
Right now, the Leafs are in a position where they have won five of six and have papered over their early season struggles. A narrative about new guys fitting in with the team, the coach finding the right mix (Robertson and Domi and Jarnkrok) (Reaves) and getting some wins even though Samsonov has been shaky and Liljegren is injured is starting to take hold.
But all that is just noise. The results of games in November don’t matter nearly as much as what you can learn from the underlying numbers and then, hopefully, apply to your decision making in order to make the team better in time for the playoffs.
It is my opinion that Shanahan should be fired for losing Kyle Dubas, and for failing to properly search for a replacement before settling for a typical “hockey guy” with a lifetime of connections, and a terrible track record, in about 34 seconds.
From his time in Calgary and his brief time in Toronto, I know all I need to know about Brad Treliving. Shanahan has had his time and while I liked his original vision, he has betrayed it and sold out, in order to run the Leafs like every other dumb team in the league.
It’s time for change. The Leafs only have a limited time when Marner and Matthews and Nylander and Tavares are all as good as they are now. I don’t think they should waste any more of it letting Brendan Shanahan call the shots.
From the second he hired Brad Treliving it was clear he was out of ideas, and now it’s time to clean house.