Do it.

Maple Leafs defenceman Frank Corrado – at least I think he plays defence, I haven’t seen him since the spring – has been a healthy scratch for every Toronto game so far this season.

Let’s lay some facts out there before I go white-knighting for this guy:

• “Just send Corrado to the minors.” You can’t. Well, you could, but because he is on a one-way contract, he will have to clear waivers first. My assumption is that the Leafs believe that Corrado would get claimed off waivers. After all, Toronto claimed Corrado off waivers from the Vancouver Canucks last season.
• Corrado still gets paid even if he doesn’t play. His salary is $600,000 on a one-year deal. He’s getting paid “Show money” while not playing in the NHL. Not the worst way in the world to make money.
• It’s hard to play in the NHL. Most hockey players don’t.

Since that’s out of the way: #FreeFrankCorrado.

Let’s assume that Corrado is the Leafs’ 8th-best defenceman. After all, the team is carrying eight defenders and Corrado is the only one who hasn’t played a game yet. There’s no way, no situation whatsoever, that the Leafs could find a way to squeak him into the lineup?

Matt Hunwick has only played in six games this season due to injury. That means that he’s missed seven so far. In no situation – maybe after a bad performance or in a situation where the team had to play on back-to-back nights – could Corrado have helped? Is the gap between Corrado and say Martin Marincin or Roman Polak so undeniable, so enormous, that the team couldn’t have used him for one game? I’m talking literally just one.

You want to keep him in case there are injuries? Fine. But what exactly do you expect out of him when that time comes? I hope it isn’t a fresh, game-ready player in mid-season form. How could he possibly be? On practise alone?

Many have watched the Leafs play this season and felt encouraged by the performance of the rookies. High-flying forwards aside, I would assume that if Nikita Zaitsev and Connor Carrick didn’t look this NHL-ready right away, we probably would have seen Corrado at least once by now. But does anybody deny that the Leafs’ Achilles heel so far has been defence?

The Leafs are 11th in the NHL with 2.85 goals per game. That’s good.

The Leafs are 29th in the NHL with 3.62 goals against per game. That’s bad.

The Leafs are 1st (!!!) in the NHL in shots per game with 33.3. That’s good. The best, actually.

The Leafs are are 28th in the NHL in shots against per game with 33.3. That’s bad. Third worst, actually.

Corrado isn’t trying to crack Team Canada, here. He’s trying to crack the 2016-17 Maple Leafs.

This is a very confusing quote from Mike Babcock. The argument against a lineup change is that the Leafs have won three of their past four games. Fair. What did the Leafs excel at other than letting Frederik Andersen save the day? Andersen had to make 44 saves in the Leafs’ win over the Oilers. He had to make 42 saves to get the win against Buffalo. Then the Leafs beat the Canucks in the middle of a long losing streak before getting a school year’s worth of lunch money taken from them by the LA Kings.

To give Babcock the benefit of the doubt, he was probably just trying to have some fun at the media’s expense and keep in lighthearted. Just in case anybody argues that the Leafs are fine though, especially on defence, I just want to state that no, they aren’t.

“He’s not good” might be a decent argument. It’s worth finding out if that’s true, would be mine. How could we know how bad he sucks, if, in fact, he does suck? Because he played 39 games on a last-place team last season and almost all of those games were down the stretch? Why on earth did they re-sign him then?

MapleLeafs.com doesn’t even have Frank Corrado on this season’s stats page, dude!

You could argue that Corrado isn’t alone, which is sort of true. Seth Griffith has only played three games since getting claimed off waivers and Peter Holland only played six before joining Corrado in the press box as a healthy scratch. At least those guys played though! At least they got a chance.

Look, I’m not saying Corrado is the saviour. I’m not even saying he’s going to make the team better. I’m not even going to argue that he should be ranked higher than the Leafs’ eighth-best defender. What I will argue is that Corrado has played as many games for the Vancouver Canucks this season as he has for the Maple Leafs, and that’s humiliating.

You could argue that this is a new era in Toronto. No more player entitlement and no more “blue-and-white disease.” At what point does taking it to this level and doing this to players start to look bad on the team?

You’ve got a back-to-back coming up against the Flyers and Penguins. You’ve just allowed seven goals for the second time in 13 games. Give the guy a chance and #FreeFrankCorrado. If he stinks then you just stick him back in the press box again. If he doesn’t, you could be improving one of the worst defences in the league.