Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Cut Ryan Reaves, Fix Blue-Line

The Toronto Maple Leafs are not only in the midst of a  really weird schedule that saw them get a whole bunch of off-days to go to Sweden and then return an even lighter schedule, but they aren’t even the city’s most interesting team right now.

For perhaps the first time ever, the Toronto Maple Leafs have ceded the spotlight to the Toronto Blue Jays in the middle of a hockey season.

As the Jays chase Shohei Ohtani, the Leafs have five days to..

…..apparently do nothing.

Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Cut Ryan Reaves, Fix Blue-Line

While the Leafs lucky results these past two months have bought them time, they are really pushing their luck with (what at least seems to be) a laid back attitude towards fixing their team.

Given their obvious bad-at-the-time summer additions, and recent rumours about Eric Gudbranson and Rasmus Ristolainen, it is not at all obvious that this is a competently run team.

And that means that it is not clear that they actually recognize how badly they’ve played and how lucky their results have been, which means it’s not clear that they will be proactive to fix their team.

It kinda seems like they are just going to wait until things start to fall apart before making a move.

And it also seems that when they make a move, it will be a bad one.

I ran a picture of John Ferguson Jr the other day in place of Brad Treliving, so that should let you know what I think of the new GM’s job to date.

However, all is not lost.  I don’t have anything against him, and I hope he improves going forward.  The Leafs GM hasn’t shown a very clear thought process on his time on the job so far, but hopefully that’s because he started the job so unexpectedly and had to catch up a lot.

Maybe he’ll turn out to be a good GM afterall.

But if that’s the case, he better get a move on because the Toronto Maple Leafs record is a mirage and this team could be in danger of missing the playoffs if they don’t drastically improve their play over the next two months.

The first they need to do is easy, and that is to cut Ryan Reaves. It’s embarrassing to run him out there every night knowing he’s signed for three years and couldn’t make the Newfoundland Growlers on merit alone.

That’s a slam dunk and it’s a month and a half overdue.

Second thing is to make a move on the blue-line, and not for some washed up loser whose over 30.  The Leafs need to take a big swing at a young, potentially elite blue-liner.

Ideally someone who doesn’t play for the Calgary Flames (hopefully BT realizes there are 30 other trading partner options) and isn’t named Noah Hannifin.

A move is overdue, and the Leafs are being outshined by the Blue Jays in the middle of the hockey season.  Not even John Ferguson Jr. ever had that happen to him.