Toronto Maple Leafs Must Be Joking: Press Conference a Total Disgrace
By James Tanner
The first week of the Toronto Maple Leafs off-season has been like taking a tourbus through Crazy Town.
The Toronto Maple Leafs lost to the Boston Bruins in the dumbest possible way (David Pastrnkak gets wide open while Samsonov just watches the puck come out of the corner without cutting it off) and then the first week of the off-season opened in the same way.
The succession of stupid events started Saturday when The Professional Hockey Writers Association embarrassed itself by leaving a 70 goals scorer nominated for the Ted Lindsay, Selke and Lady Byng Trophies off their list of finalists.
Then Joseph Woll couldn't go. Then Keefe paired Matthews with Holmberg, scratched Nick Robertson (an under-discussed horrendous decision) and skated the combo of Edmundson-Lyubushkin-Benoit for nealry 60 minutes.
The refs called a penalty on a slash that wasn't a slash, a Leafs penalty shot was not called, and then the infamous Samsonov error in overtime.
Afterwards we saw Leafs Nation turn on Mitch Marner, we saw members of the media write articles about trading him for a loss, we saw the Leafs put all the blame on the one guy you could say had a successful spring, and then hold one of the dubest press conferences ever.
The succession of stupidity was broken only by Sheldon Keefe's classy goodbye video. Best of luck to him in the future, and I hope enjoys the Stanley Cups all ex-Leafs tend to win after they leave!