The Truth that Toronto Maple Leafs fans don't want to hear, let alone admit

The best hope for the 2025 Toronto Maple Leafs is the 2018 Washington Capitals - a broken team, screwed up by management and left for dead that was far weaker than the Championship Caliber versions of the team that immediately preceded it. And yet, against all odds, the very luck-based tournament that had screwed them over before gifted them a championship as if it was their turn.

The Toronto Maple Leafs can only hope that is their destiny, because all other paths are closed.

The Leafs are not going to win the Atlantic Division. They are not going to challenge for the President's Trophy. It is unlikely that they will have any award winners on their roster.

But most of all, the Leafs are done in, before they even start, by some of the worst management in the NHL.

The Truth that Toronto Maple Leafs fans don't want to hear, let alone admit

You don't need or want to read a long essay that tells you what you already know in your heart to be true, so I'm just going to list the Leafs problems in point form. If you, unlike me, think they can overcome these problems, that's great. I don't know where my optimism went, but I can't find it anywhere.

I can tell you one thing: it wasn't under the couch with my keys. Here we go:

- Marner not signed.

- Fealty to veterans over developing prospects

- Old school coach a terrible choice

- GM afraid to make trades.

- The entire off-season essentially amounted to Tanev in and Bertuzzi out, which is an even trade at best. The Leafs did not get a 3C, an elite defender, or an elite goalie like they wanted to. In fact, while change was promised, only superficial change was delivered. All that, and Auston Matthews is likely to regress from the inane highs of last season.

- Shanahan tried to re-invent the wheel, and when he didn't have immediate success, he retreated way too far back in the opposite direction. The Leafs are now the least imaginative, least innovative, most old-school, "hockey-guy" ran team in the NHL and, frankly, it's pathetic.

- They don't have a third-line centre. Their new coach is repeating all of Keefe's classic mistakes (Domi at centre, Marner and Matthews paired together) and he's favoring veterns over young players like it's 1965.

- Very stupid bet on untested goalies.

- Ryan Reaves still on the roster, which is unforgivable and really, tells you everything you need to know about how this team is operated and why they won't be successful baring a complete fluke.

- The most expensive fourth line in hockey.

- The oldest and most average blue-line. They don't have a single player on their blue-line with upside outside of Timothy Liljegren and their management of him is so obviously dumb that there are trade rumours popping up about their only young puck mover with any upside.

- They have don't seem to understand the importance of having Easton Cowan on the roster, of having Domi on the wing, and of having Ekman-Larsson on the 3rd pairing. These three errors are going to destroy them.

- Cap space is tight already, and the team seems unlikely to make the right moves to make it more tenable. Instead of avoiding the LTIR and banking money, they are likely going to go right to it with Hakanpaa which is incredibly short-sighted and a huge risk with literally no chance of reward.

There are a lot of problems that the Leafs have, but the fact is, there is just no way you can enter the season with questions about the blue-line, goalies, and Centres and not have at least one of those problems blow up in your face.

In a best case scenario, the Blue-Line turns back Father Time and a couple of defenseman turn in elite-level seasons, while Nylander is a star centre, and the goalies combine to be a top ten tandem in the NHL.

If those three things happen, the Leafs will be a top team. But I don't see a path for them to be a top team otherwise, and I don't believe for a second that even one of those things, let alone all three, will happen.