5 Regrets the Toronto Maple Leafs Will Have This Summer
The Toronto Maple Leafs haven't really clicked this season at all.
From day one, they were a work-in-progress after a bad summer, but the weird thing was that the new Toronto Maple Leafs didn't really do any work during the season.
Multiple times it looked like Keefe was about to fired, then the team would have a miraculous comeback and go on a winning streak.
Specifically I'm thinking about an early-season game in Tampa which would have been (I think) their fifth loss in a row and they won after being down by three goals in the first period, but there were at least two similar situations (the big comeback and ultimate OT loss to Columbus was another).
There were times when the team appeared desperate for both a goalie and a defenseman, and the team just did nothing. I've never seen a team that was expected to compete for a championship just sit there and do nothing every time something came up, all season long.
Ultimately having 5 superstars and a great cast of supporting scorers worked out, at least for a while, and over a 28 game stretch the Leafs ended up being a top team, winning over 70% of their points and leading the league in scoring.
Only problem? Despite this excellent run, every team the Leafs were competing with went on a similar one, and now with only ten games left the Atlantic Division is lost to them and Tampa might pass them and turn them into a Wild Card team, which will be a humilation.
And while anything can happen in the NHL's Annual Tournament of Variance, i.e the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Toronto Maple Leafs do not seem like a good bet to win the Stanley Cup.
If we are lucky, this will put a reverse jinx on the team and this too-soon list of regrets will come back to haunt me when they win the Cup.
So here goes nothing.
5 Regrets the Toronto Maple Leafs Will Have This Summer
5. Hiring Brad Treliving
The Kyle Dubas conversation is annoying because he's turned into a political figure where the takes are just so biased and ridiculous that you can't have a normal conversation about him.
The fact is, however, that the Leafs trained a young manager and let him learn on the job and just when he was perhaps going to put that experience to use, he went to another team.
Dubas was only controversial because a billion dollar franchise not only put a kid in charge of their team, but they let him try to innovate in an industry that is extremely hostile to innovation. It was awesome in just about every way and probably won't ever happen again, so it's unfortunate that when bad luck and circumstance prevented him from wining that people took it personally.
No matter. He had his run and while I personally would rather have kept him on, I'm happy to move on as well. I just don't really like going from the cutting edge of the NHL basically the epitome of the average NHL GM.
Treliving seems to operate by the Book of Cliched Hockey Beliefs and he's also the only GM in the league with 2 disappointing teams in the league right now. *(You could put Dubas on this list, but he left Treliving the league's best core and $20 million to spend).
If the Leafs don't make it out of the first round, the upside is that the incoming President of MLSE will likely fire Shanahan and that means a one-and-done with Treliving. I'd rather win the Stanely Cup or at least have a long playoff season, but at least there is that silver lining.
Brad Treliving is a bad GM and he never should have been in charge for one of Auston Matthews' limited Prime Seasons.
It's too bad Dubas lost the power-struggle. I would have liked to see what he'd have done without Shanahan meddling all the time.
4. Summer Spending
What in the hell was Brad Treliving thinking last year, or at least, who was advising him?
Signing Tyler Bertuzzi for a one-year deal was smart. The rest? Not so much.
Max Domi is a one-dimensional player who loses his minutes unless extremely sheltered. John Klingberg was 30 and in a massive decline even before the injury. Hockey players - with the exception, appearently, of ex-Leafs - don't get better after the age of 30.
Klingberg will go down as one of the worst signings in the history of the team.
As will the signing of Ryan Reaves, which remains an absolute embarrassment. Signing Reaves to a one-year deal for the league minimum would have been pretty indefensible, but giving him more money than the minimum, and three-years is just criminal. David Clarkson's agent probably couldn't believe it when it happened.
Making David Kampf the highest paid fourth liner in the NHL was a choice, and not a good one. But despite all of that, the decision to not improve the blue-line at all, and to come into the season with Samsonov and Woll as the starters were much worse.
Treliving's summer was bad, his season was worse. The current team seems to succeed in spite of their GM, not because of him.
3. Not Trading William Nylander At His Absolute Peak
William Nylander is a special player and one of my favorite Toronto Maple Leafs of all time.
The fan in me is happy that he re-signed and will likely play his whole career on my favorite team. Like Morgan Rielly, this makes me extremely happy.
But also like Morgan Rielly, the cold analytical part of my brain knows that signing him was probably a mistake.
Nylander will never be better than he is right now, and the smart play was to do a sign-and-trade to bring in the kind of elite defenseman or goalie that you can't really get without drafting or making a major Trade.
Nylander for Noah Dobson? Nylander for Juuse Saros? Something like that would have helped a lot more than re-signing your third best offensive player.
Again, I love Nylander and I'm happy he's here. But when the guy is absolutely peaking at the perfect time, you've got to trade him for a younger player who plays a position you need.
Then again, maybe the Leafs will prove me wrong by winning the Stanley Cup with the best forward group in hockey but also the worst blue-line and goalie group of any contender.
2. Not Upgrading the Blue-Line
Off all the things the Toronto Maple Leafs did or didn't do this past year, there is only one thing they will come to regret more than not upgrading their blue-line.
The Leafs signed Klingberg in the summer with an idea that another puck-moving defenseman would really help the team as assembled. This was a sensible, and I believe, correct assessment.
The Leafs were misguided in choosing Klingberg specifically, but he did exemplify the type of player they needed - just a healthier version.
And to be sure, even a healthy Klinbgerg wasn't enough to put the Leafs blue-line in line with the better ones in the league, but their most confusing move was not replacing Klinbger when he went down.
The Leafs added Joel Edmundson and Ilya Lyubushkin, two players who are difficult to play against, but whose value is largely offset by their lack of offense and a tendancy to get stuck in their own zones. If they make the Leafs blue-line better it is not by a significant degree.
The Leafs blue-line is absent a top-level superstar and lacks mobility and puck-moving skills overall. Given how good the team's forwards are, I think it was a major mistake to try to get through this season with such an obvious weakness.
You can't expect the management to work miracles, but I don't think adding players who are significantly better than Lyubushkin or Edmundson is a big ask.
1. Not Getting a Goalie
Not adding a goalie is by far the biggest thing the Leafs GM and his associates will regret when this team is inevitably beaten in the playoffs.
Joseph Woll has talent, but he is a rookie who has played approximately one full season over the last four years. He's injury prone and has no experience. It is wise to give him a shot and I hope he succeeds, but when one of your goalies makes the league minimum there is no reason not to spend heavily another goalie, especially if the two best players in the history of your franchise are in their primes.
The Leafs are in win-now mode and coming into the season with a rookie goalie and a guy they sandbagged in arbitration and wouldn't committ to long term (smartly it turns out) is a risk they didn't need to take.
Goalies can be hard to predict and finding an elite one and then getting him to perform up to the level you expect can be the hardest thing to do in hockey. But that makes sense because the hardest thing to do should have the biggest reward, and having a top goalie is easily the best single thing a team could have.
The salary cap is no excuse because they had 20 million and decided not to use it on goalies. They also could have moved some combo of Kampf/Domi/Brodie at any time to get the cap room for a goalie.
Just because finding a top goalie is hard doesn't mean you shouldn't try. The Leafs did not do enough to land a reliable goalie and today they sit 22nd in the NHL in overall save percentage. The fact that they are the 10th best team by points-percentage with that level of goaltending is impressive.
Being 10th with the 22nd goaltending tells me that this team could be first with top-level goaltending and at the top of the league with even league-average goaltending.
The Leafs could fluke their way to a Stanley Cup this spring, but they won't be entering the NHL Playoffs as one of the top contenders and that is almost exclusively because they do not have a top goalie.
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That will be their number-one regret come summertime.