The people in Toronto right now, they want their scalps. You see, when they all said of the Leafs “The regular season doesn’t matter” after their latest playoff loss, what they meant was “The regular season doesn’t matter … provided you play well and stay atop the division, otherwise we’re gonna want changes.”
That part was unspoken, but pretty clearly implied.
Here’s what I believe about where the Leafs are, and where they would go without changes being made. And by no changes being made, let’s make it explicit and say that means “without firing the coach and without trading a core player.”
I still see a good team with a high ceiling. I think without any changes, they make playoffs and have a 50/50 shot in Round 1 (though with the brainworms that have grown from previous playoff failures, call it 51/49 that they lose).
That’s not a super appealing scenario, given what the Leafs have been through.
For those sick of numbers, you’ll be pleased to know that the underlying numbers show them as much more average than previous Leafs iterations. There is no nerd pushing their glasses up their nose saying “Well actually, despite their record, they’re good.”
But I’m adamant that those play-driving stats aren’t an accurate reflection of this team, but rather an accurate reflection of what I wrote about on Thursday: that the team is showing some combination of being overly nice (at best) and entirely apathetic (at worst) to start the season. They seem to be a team waiting around for “the games that matter” to kick it into proper gear, assuming they can coast by to enough regular season success with their talent to earn another series of playoff games.
What underscores a lot of the frustration and failure here isn’t a lack of confidence, it might be an overconfidence that the team they know they can be – and have shown themselves to be in the past – is still lying within them. And there’s an overconfidence that they’ll be able to conjure it up when they need to.
Well, don’t look now, but they need to and fast, or the scenario I discussed above – having a chance to get through without any changes – will never have a chance to play out.
I heard from a couple people around the NHL in response to my column last week on the Leafs, and the theme from those was that I needed an addition: that this team will be fine when they decide it’s more important to be good than cool.
It’s the position the core four – and namely I’m talking about Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews here – have in relationship to their coach that seems to make it hard to poke or prod more out of them when it’s needed. Those guys have the contracts – and the obvious fact that superstars make team success go – and Keefe is a first-time NHL head coach who took over for a guy who was a coaching giant in the league in Mike Babcock. It’s tougher to tell right now who has more sway on the team, those players or their coach. And within in a dynamic like that, the players may not be as receptive to suggestion.
That dynamic is worth it’s own evaluation, but with it being what it is, it brings me to a criticism not of Marner or Matthews or Keefe, but to a question about the other players: If the team agrees with what we’re talking about here, that they are as I’ve suggested – a good team – then where’s the internal “defibrillator” the team needs?
Everything I’m outlining above feels like a team that needs something big to jumpstart their attention, and most are understandably talking about firings and trades for that. Those are the big red buttons a GM can push. But shouldn’t we expect, at some point, a guy like Mark Giordano to grab someone by the scruff (metaphorically or not) and say “Hey, I left money on the table to be here and have a chance at a Cup, can you wake up?” Morgan Rielly is saying what may seem like the right things about patience and process, but isn’t he ready to call someone out?
Fans are out here losing their collective mind, but the team just seems to be skimming along, waiting for someone else to do something.
Over the past six or seven years of this core’s reign, the only player I can remember calling for better from his teammates, loudly and without wavering, is Jake Muzzin. The rugged defender has the Cups and experience and personality to say, without doubt, that this team has more to give. But he’s on the shelf with an unfortunate long-term injury now, and shouldn’t have to be that guy alone.
John Tavares is working hard and playing well so far this season, but doesn’t seem like the type of captain to deliver the collective smack this team needs from the inside. William Nylander simply isn’t that guy, and won’t ever be.
Of course it could come from Matthews or Marner – in theory! – but they seem to be the very guys needing the inspiration right now.
I imagine that when they were here guys Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau explained the urgency, but you’d hate to see talented players like the Leafs’ dynamic duo shipping around the league in a decade chasing one last shot. These are those true shots for Matthews and Marner, these are those peak Sharks years, and it’s on the players to realize it and not blow their opportunities because they had a run of time where they felt particularly uninspired.
To take it back to the idea about what happens if the Leafs do nothing in terms of major moves, I don’t think they would just circle the drain and finish 20th this season. Chris Johnston recently noted that the past five Cup winning teams have opened their seasons with these opening months (games played varies because of the COVID-related weirdness):
• 2017-18 Washington: 5-6-1
• 2018-19 St. Louis: 3-4-3
• 2019-20 Tampa Bay: 6-4-2
• 2020-21 Tampa Bay: 4-1-1
• 2021-22 Colorado: 4-4-0
The Leafs are 4-4-2, which is just another way to say it’s not time to write this group off. Sometimes a little early-season rockiness can help a team figure itself out and carve out a better way forward.
But Toronto has made it unnecessarily difficult on themselves, as the Leafs are wont to do, leaking standings points to true bottom-feeders of the league with what should have been a soft start to the season.
And now, to even get to this idea of “what happens if nothing changes,” they need some internal push among the players themselves to ever see that future. When you do nothing with your roster or coaching staff you have to get better from within, and that comes down to the players in the jerseys. If the players don’t seem to be as motivated by Keefe’s poking and prodding (for whatever reasons), it has to come from them.
They have to want it for themselves.
The salary structure leaves some players in weird spots. Can guys who play bit parts on expiring contracts, like David Kampf, call others out? Can new players with longer deals, like Calle Jarnkrok, say anything? It just feels like the authority of this team is so clearly tied up in its top line – the only one inexplicably not shuffled before the Anaheim game – that few players are empowered to speak up.
But it’s now or never time, or there will trades, firings and all the rest. Does this group believe in themselves, and want to move forward as currently constructed?
Right now, that’s not entirely clear. But if it’s not going to be either of those things, it can’t be “patience” and “process” talk in the weeks ahead. Some players should be mad, they should want better from one another, and they should be pushing from within.
Because right now this sleepy little group doesn’t appear to care for anything very much. Not winning, not hockey, not each other.
