For a brief moment there was some hope that everyone involved with the Toronto Maple Leafs latest self-made debacle – which is to say, the Leafs players who cooked up their petulant plan to forgo their traditional post-game fan salute – would come to their senses and do what thinking people do when they realize in the cold light of day what they did in the heat of the night was dumb.
Or ill-considered. Poorly thought out. A petty gesture carried out without proper consideration of the message or the consequences of the message.
That was the hope as the team met behind closed doors after practice Friday.
But it didn’t last long to be dashed. It didn’t take long to realize this edition of the Toronto Maple Leafs is as flawed off the ice as they are on the ice; that the same athletes who can’t quite pull themselves into the mainstream of the NHL playoff conversation are so tone deaf and bunkered that they can’t grasp how deep a hole they’re digging for themselves.
The meeting was merely to figure out who was going to come out and carry the water for their collective charade. Then the dressing room doors opened and the Leafs leadership group took turns reading from the same hastily prepared script, basically asking people to believe that A) not saluting the fans was not a snub directed at their fans and B) they can’t believe anyone would take it that way.
Seriously.
Dion Phaneuf: “That was something we obviously discussed about and to be completely honest with you it was something about how we’ve been playing at home, our record and just changing up routine. We did a lot of stuff different throughout the day and that was one of the things we decided to change.
“We have a great respect for our fans … this by no means was any attack on our fans or anything personal, it was more about changing up routine.”
Tyler Bozak: “We weren’t happy with how we’re playing at home and you just change things up. I do it myself during the day, I might tie my right skate first …. We really didn’t think of that [that the fans might take it as a snub].”
James van Riemsdyk: “All this is about is changing our routine … it’s not a slight at anyone. I don’t understand why it’s being turned into that. I don’t understand why it’s being perceived that way.”
Put another way: there are only two possible reactions when the Leafs captain – backed by his robo-answer teammates – says suddenly stopping their ritual of skating lazily to centre ice and half-heartedly raising their sticks to the crowd was simply an effort to change their luck.
One is that they’re not quite bright enough – dumb is a harsh word – to understand what they were getting into. That stopping thanking the fans after a week in which they lost back-to-back games 15-4, were booed on home ice and jersey tossing became a thing could only invite the interpretation that players were getting a bit pissy about how they were being treated at home.
The other is that they’re not telling the truth – again lying sounds so much worse – and they’re arrogant enough to believe that as long as they cling to their flimsy version of the facts tightly enough, people will believe it.
In either case, it’s as good an example yet that the leadership group of this team doesn’t quite get it. At all.
But who does? I put a request in to Leafs president Brendan Shanahan, but he wasn’t available for comment. Hey, if there’s nothing good to say, might as well not say it.
His team finally wins a game at home and they bring this on themselves. I’m sure Shanahan’s shaking his head like everyone else.
How simple all this would be if someone – let’s say Phaneuf – emerged and told some version of what can only be the truth:
That upon reflection, choosing their first win at home after two nearly historic losses – 6-2 to the lowly Buffalo Sabres and 9-2 at the ACC to the Nashville Predators – as the moment to stop doing their fan salute was a bad idea, and we apologize.
Or even something like: “Our hockey team feels like we’re under siege; we’ve taken on an ‘us-against-the-world’ mentality; we’re playing for each other right now and hopefully the fans will see that and we’ll earn their respect as we go.”
Or: “Playing in Toronto is brutal right now; it’s not our fault that we haven’t won a Stanley Cup in 47 years, but sometimes it feels like we’re being blamed for years of other people’s failure. Maybe not saluting the fans wasn’t the right thing to do, I guess it was our way of expressing our frustration.”
Any of those explanations would have been fine, honestly. The reality is this is not that big a deal. No one really cares about the salute and if they never do it again, it won’t matter.
The only comments that came from the Leafs Friday that rang true were from Joffrey Lupul: “Personally,” he said, “I feel it [the salute] feels kind of fake.”
But here’s the thing: When you start saluting the fans after every win, how do you stop? When do you stop? The answer is there is never a right time to stop acknowledging the most loyal fan base in sports and one that spends more money to watch hockey than any group of people in the history of humankind.
There is no right time, and choosing to do it the first time you win after one of the most embarrassing home losses in recent memory is absolutely the wrong time.
Still everyone makes mistakes; people, parents; hockey teams.
But in all cases it’s not the lie that gets you in the end. It’s the cover-up.
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