Remember that quote from Forrest Gump? “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.” Life, in this context, can also be swapped out for the Toronto Maple Leafs. The recurring theme with this hockey team over the past few years, or really, throughout the entire Auston Matthews/Mitch Marner era, has been that you don’t know which version of the Maple Leafs you’re going to get from game to game. It could be the version that dominates their opponent both offensively and defensively, or it could be the one that forgets to show up to the rink and struggles to put anything together.
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The Maple Leafs just wrapped up a dreadful road trip out west, losing all of their games against the California teams as well as the Vegas Golden Knights, and returning home with a 1-2-2 record from the trip. The Forrest Gump reference works perfectly here, as they kicked things off with a commanding win over the Winnipeg Jets, only to seemingly abandon all of the things they did right for the rest of the trip.
Now sitting with a record of 4-4-2 on the season, the Maple Leafs are off until Wednesday, and the vibe around the team is darker than ever. You could sit down and pick apart multiple areas of their game that need to be improved after watching those games, but the reality is, the flaws with this team all circle back to one thing – the lack of a true identity.
Recapping Maple Leafs’ Terrible Western Road Trip
Part of what makes these past few games especially disappointing is seeing how well they played against the Jets to start the road trip. Not only were they in control of the game for most of the 60 minutes, but they also outmuscled the Jets and stood up for each other, something that fans have been clamouring to see every day. They left Canada Life Centre with a 4-2-0 record, looking to build off of that first game. But the moment they arrived in Vegas, everything seemed to fall apart.
The loss against the Golden Knights was probably the easiest to stomach. They were simply outplayed by a fellow good hockey team. Happens every night. Normally, you would look at the week ahead, see two California teams that were involved in the draft lottery last year, and think “ok, that’s a good opportunity to regain these points”. But, as they’ve done time and time again in the past, they once again played down to their opponents’ level. They allowed two goals in the span of a minute against the San Jose Sharks on Thursday (Oct. 27) to go down 3-1, and despite a last-ditch effort to make it 3-3, Erik Karlsson scored on a breakaway following a William Nylander giveaway.
Heading into Los Angeles to face the Kings, with Ilya Samsonov back between the pipes, it looked like a good opportunity for the team to bounce back and regain some confidence. Instead, the story was once again the inability to play a full 60 minutes. A couple of unnecessary penalties from Justin Holl had the Maple Leafs shorthanded more often than not, and they wound up losing 4-2.
The grand finale of the whole thing was Sunday night’s (Oct. 30) game against the Anaheim Ducks. The Maple Leafs got out in front early, and when the Ducks tied the game, they responded quickly. They even added some insurance with a Calle Jarnkrok shorthanded goal. But, Marner’s second turnover of the game (after the first goal) resulted in the Ducks making it 3-2. This led to the Maple Leafs calling a timeout and proceeding to bench him, but only for a shift, which sort of defeats the purpose of benching somebody. The Ducks responded by tying the game, and they almost won it on a goal by Frank Vatrano, but the goal was disallowed, and they proceeded to lose in overtime anyways.
The common theme throughout all of these games, and the reason fans have such a bad taste in their mouth, doesn’t really stem so much from the fact that they lost these games, but rather the way they lost. Sloppy, seemingly disengaged efforts coupled with careless play with and without the puck led to the Maple Leafs losing all of these entirely winnable games, and returning home once again asking themselves what went wrong.
Comparisons to October 2021 Need to Stop
In the post-game press conference, Marner was asked about the team’s slow start, and cited their struggles in October of last season. It’s true, Mitch has a point. The Maple Leafs went 4-4-1 in the month of October last season, and then turned things around to go 12-2-0 in the month of November, including a sweep of the California teams in commanding fashion. If you’re solely looking at their month-by-month record from last season, then yes, there’s reason to believe they won’t play poorly like this all season.
Here’s where I take issue with that comparison – where did that strong month of November last season get them? It got them Player of the Month honours for Jack Campbell. It got them on track for a 115-point season, setting a franchise record. These are both great, but did that team make it any further than the first round of the playoffs? You know, the playoffs where they had to face the defending Cup-champion Tampa Bay Lightning after throwing away several games to teams that they should have handled with ease? And more importantly, is that what this team should be striving for in year seven of the Matthews/Marner era? Another strong regular season?
You can look around the league and see that the Maple Leafs aren’t the only team with high expectations who had an underwhelming October. The Lightning are 5-4-0. The Colorado Avalanche are 4-4-1. The St. Louis Blues are 3-4-0, and the Pittsburgh Penguins are 4-4-0. The difference between these teams and the Maple Leafs is that all of them have won a Stanley Cup in recent memory. That’s not to say they’ve earned the right to coast through games in October, but they definitely have a little more leeway since they have the recent success to back it up. Why should the Maple Leafs get the same thing despite the fact that they haven’t been able to win more than three playoff games in a single season?
What the Maple Leafs’ Identity Should Be
When you build your team around a 60-goal scorer, a star playmaker who should be good for 100 points over a full season, a couple more 30-goal scorers, and a defenseman who thrives on the rush and in the o-zone, it’s obvious what the identity of that team should be. And, believe it or not, it can be done. The Penguins won the Cup in 2016 with Ron Hainsey and Olli Maatta as their top pairing. And we’ve seen what this Maple Leafs team can do when they’re on their game, just look at what they did against the Lightning in Game 1 of last year’s playoffs.
The problem is that it seems to be very rare that the Maple Leafs ever control the pace of the game on their own terms. And the reality is, they’ve got enough raw talent on offense that they can sometimes score themselves out of games like this. But when they don’t, they get sucked into playing the style their opponent plays, and that’s when these issues of starting slow, ending slow, or playing down to their opponents tend to burn them the worst. Just look at the 2020 Bubble series against the Columbus Blue Jackets and the 2021 Playoffs against the Montreal Canadiens for all the proof you need. The Maple Leafs had a far more talented roster than both of those teams, yet they lost both series’ because they were outworked and limited in what they could do with their strong suits.
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If the identity of your team is going to be pure skill and offense, then you need to be bringing your A-game every night, or at least on a regular basis. Obviously, no team is going to play every game perfectly, but the Maple Leafs tend to rely on their skill to get them out of trouble, and that seems near-impossible for them to do against teams who are either defensively heavy or rely on their hard work to win games. Too often this team gets caught on their heels in games they should be having a much easier time with, and too often we circle back to this notion when they lose important playoff games.
Players, Keefe & Dubas Should All Be On the Hot Seat
You can say it’s early, but it really isn’t. It’s early for this season, sure, but again, we’re going on seven years with this group and we’re still having the same conversations about this team. I’ve defended Kyle Dubas and Sheldon Keefe in the past, but if current trends keep up, a change is going to have to come whether that’s in the front office, behind the bench, or on the ice. I firmly believe that the players should carry most of the blame for these efforts more than anybody else, but in the end, Dubas is the one who put this roster together and Keefe is the one who lines them up every night, so somebody’s got to be held accountable. And as of right now, I don’t know who’s going to be the one to get them out of this.
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The reality is, this team will bounce back. They’ll probably go on a winning streak sometime in November or December to calm the masses a little bit. And, they’ll more than likely still make the playoffs. They have enough raw talent alone to get them there. But as Sportsnet’s Luke Fox put it in his recent roundup of the road trip, they won’t scare anybody when they get there. Not unless they change something in their game, whether that’s on the ice or in the form of a trade or a firing. The question for the rest of the season will ultimately be whether this team will be able to find that spark internally or if it will require something more drastic. Going on seven years into this, I’m not confident that this group will be able to dig themselves out of this hole by themselves. At least not in April and May.
