MONTREAL — Team Tank is welcoming all new recruits.
Losing is the new winning.
Every day between now and April 15 is Opposite Day.
Yes, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ tumble down the leaderboard has been so aggressive and precipitous, all that flak general manager Brad Treliving is getting for not protecting his 2026 first-round draft choice through top 10 may be moot.
With a little lottery luck and more performances like Tuesday’s 3-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens, these once-mighty Leafs may indeed fall all the way to the NHL’s bottom five and keep the pick they surrendered to Boston (in a pricy package for Brandon Carlo) after all.
Like a campy horror flick, the Maple Leafs are so bad, it’s good.
In an Atlantic Division that appears flipped, turned upside down, the Maple Leafs have gone from first to worst.
Still seeking their first win since the Olympic torch got extinguished, the Leafs are now losers of eight straight.
Year over year, their goal differential has plummeted by 63 goals over 65 games, from plus-37 to minus-26. That’s worst in the Eastern Conference. They have two regulation wins over their past 21 attempts.
Were it not for a solid performance by goaltender Joseph Woll (.938) at Bell Centre, the Maple Leafs — who were outshot 33-18 by the younger, faster and suddenly more relevant Canadiens — wouldn’t have hung around long enough to keep this one close until Jake Evans’ empty-netter in the final minute.
What’s changed now, though, after trading away three legit forwards for picks and giving more shifts to Marlies, is that the Maple Leafs are embracing the suck.
“At the beginning there out from the break, there’s a lot of frustration and everything,” said William Nylander, the only Leaf to score.
“But now, I mean, it’s not going to help being frustrated. And so, I think the mood in locker room has changed a little bit. And I think that’s made it a better environment for everybody.”
The fifth stage of grief is acceptance.
Nylander is getting there, slowly.
The club’s leading scorer says if someone told him the Leafs would be here in mid-March, much closer to last place in the conference than a wild-card spot, he wouldn’t have believed them.
“I mean, hard to really stay optimistic in this situation,” said Nylander, who only sees “snippets” of quality hockey from his team lately.
The sulkier the Maple Leafs can remain, the better their lottery odds.
The sport’s hardest slumping team now sits seventh from the basement with a 6.5 per cent chance of winning the first-overall pick.
That Toronto’s next seven opponents — Ducks, Sabres, Wild, Islanders, Hurricanes, Senators, and Bruins — are all strong outfits trying to win bodes well for the cause.
Hockey lovers are supposed to live in a world where the Leafs and Canadiens are both good and trying to win at the same time. Strangely, a decisive Montreal victory benefits all involved, as the Habs try to stave off a late push from the Ottawa Senators.
No one is crossing his fingers for a bottom-five spot more than Treliving, who maintains he “pushed” for top-10 protection on the Carlo pick yet would be hard-pressed to find much precedent.
The Florida Panthers, also in tank mode, protected their 2026 first-rounder in the Seth Jones trade with Chicago through the top 10, for example.
Tank hard enough, and Treliving could dodge at least a sliver of embarrassment on that one.
Forfeit overall pick No. 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 to the rival Bruins? That alone is cause for dismissal.
Ironically, what’s now good for the organization does not reflect well on a bench boss only geared for one mission.
“I keep my head down and coach and try to get guys to play the best hockey they can play,” Craig Berube said. “That’s how I handle it. Nobody’s happy we’re in this situation, but you got to keep fighting and keep working and keep building and try to get better.”
That goes for a shell-shocked Nylander, too.
“It’s new for him, for sure. But every player and team goes through adversity at one point in their career, and this is some adversity that he’s normally not used to,” Berube said. “He’s got to work his way out of it.”
If the Maple Leafs aspire to work their way out of this mess and return to relevance and respectability next season, a top-five pick would go a long way.
Because missing the playoffs after nine straight years of springtime hockey must be a one-off. This thing will get back on the rails. Right?
“I mean, I sure hope that that’s the case, for sure,” Nylander said. “Otherwise…”
The superstar’s thought remained unfinished.
Instead, it was left bouncing around like a fluttery lottery ball.
Where it’ll settle, no one yet knows.
Fox’s Fast Five
• Auston Matthews’s goal drought has reached 12 games. One more game without a tuck and he ties his record, set way back as a rookie in 2016.
The captain has now fired 47 consecutive shots without hitting twine.
“It’s been tough stretch for everybody, myself personally and us as a team,” Matthews told reporters. “We’re having a tough time creating offence, finding the back of the net.”
• Fine showing by Bo Groulx after spending two years quietly working away in the minors and striving to get back in the NHL.
The callup skated as third-line centre, earned some successful penalty-killing shifts, got a couple shots on net and skated 14:13 — more than five other Leafs forwards.
No reason Groulx, recipient of a Berube back pat, shouldn’t play Thursday.
• John Tavares, 35, got a jolt last season following a forced rest during the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament. We thought the Olympic break would do the only Leaf who’s played every game some good.
Tavares, who came out the gates flying, has hit a bit of a wall. On the ice for all three goals against Tuesday, he’s now a minus-22 over his past 20 games.
Yikes.
• Basketball fan Matthews on swapping jerseys with Jason Kidd: “It was really cool. I loved watching him growing up and kind of had some mutual people that we knew. Cool to meet somebody like that.”
• Scott Laughton struggled to make his mark offensively when he got dealt last March to Toronto. He wanted to help his childhood team so bad; the lack of impact ate at him.
He freely admits that getting traded for the first time was a tricky adjustment.
Perhaps already being through that upheaval once is benefitting him in L.A., where he’s already put up three points in two games.
Not-so-fun fact: Laughton never had a multi-point game as a Leaf.
