Top Off-Season Priorities for the Toronto Maple Leafs: New GM, Coach, Goalie
The Toronto Maple Leafs had a typically disapointing spring and now we are onto the annual Summer of Shame.
No big deal for the fans, we're used to it. In fact, the best thing about being a Toronto Maple Leafs fans is you can literally never lose. You expect the team to be bad and to fail even when they aren't, so pretty much anything positive that happens is just a bonus, while losing doesn't hurt at all because you know it's going to happen.
But with the annual playoff loss comes the planning for next season.
In the past, I've been a 'run it back' kind of fan, but this year, I would I think some changes are required, specifically at the top.
Here are what I think the Leafs top 3 priorities should be this off-season.
The Toronto Maple Leafs Top 3 Off-Season Priorties
These are pretty easy, and obvious. I would be shocked if there were too many Leafs fans who disagreed.
First, as I wrote about in more detail earlier today, the Leafs need a new President and GM. It's obvious that Shanahan has to go, and if he goes, why would the Leafs stick with the guy he spent all of five minutes searching for?
Treliving is the only GM who screwed up two different NHL teams this year, so he's got to go. He's one of the worst GM's in hockey and the sooner he's gone the better. The fact that he sat out the trade deadline is inexcusable and means he should be fired.
As for Sheldon Keefe, he should have been gone last year, but somehow he stayed on. I don't pretend to know why, but it's finally time to get rid of the guy whose top notch offensive team can't score every time the calander turns to April.
His wacky lineup decisions (Matthews with Holmberg and Jarnkrok?) are just incredibly frustrating and he's well past his best-before date. Time to bring in a new coach.
As for the goalie, I wish the Leafs could stick with Joseph Woll, but he's just way too injury prone to bank on. He has never once been able to play more than 40 games in a season, getting injured every single year.
This year, he was the team's savior....until he was too injured to play in game seven, which is just about the most predictable thing ever. He could be great, but you can't bank on him and so the Leafs need to do the one thing they've never done in the Auston Matthews Era: bring in a top goalie.
There is a good chance that Ilya Sorokin or Jusse Saros could be available this summer and the Leafs need to go hard after one of them.
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New GM, new Coach, new Goalie. Those are the Leafs top 3 priorities for this year's off-season.