TORONTO — We can and we will make a deep dive into the various decisions and inevitable changes looming for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
But on the first day of another too-soon off-season, we’re still surveying the wreckage, picking at the problems, salvaging the gold, and wondering what now.
I have 42 stray thoughts on this hockey team. Here they are:
1. Following Game 3’s dismal performance in Sunrise, when the Maple Leafs called “must win” and lost, a cluster of reporters shared a silent elevator ride down from the press box with GM Kyle Dubas and Jason Spezza.
They glared red straight ahead, a thousand yards through the descending elevator’s door. You could fry an egg on the back of the general manager’s neck.
Question the man’s plan, sure. Don’t question his passion.
2. Dubas and head coach Sheldon Keefe are incredibly smart and hardworking professionals. This was also their first tour at the top level. They were handed the keys to a Ferrari and immediately asked to win the race.
No doubt, they will learn from this experience and be better for it.
At this point, I’d be curious to see Keefe work with a different general manager and Dubas hire a different coach.
3. Keefe decided to just let the boys be in those painful minutes when they returned to the dressing room after overtime in Game 5.
“I don’t address the team after losses like this. We’re gonna have time,” Keefe explained. “In all my years of coaching, it’s not a time when they’re hearing much of what you’re saying there. It’s a very dejected group…. They left it all out.”
4. Yes, Auston Matthews picked the worst time for a goal drought and deserves his share of the blame for it. But talent of his calibre doesn’t come around often.
Re-sign him.
5. Whether it’s LTIR, a buyout, or eating some salary retention and/or draft-pick positioning on a trade with a team that needs to reach the cap floor, there are ways to move on from goalie Matt Murray.
Surely, he played his final game as a Maple Leaf on April 2.
Call it the Petr Mrazek model.
6. Having the privilege of watching live games in all 32 NHL markets, I can say that no game ops crew bombards the fans with the volume of forced participation that the Leafs do through their Jumbotron.
It would be refreshing to see the Leafs allow a little more in-game breathing room and let the fans start their own “Go! Leafs! Go!” chants organically.
7. Let us never pretend again that fighting hard for “home ice advantage” in the regular season matters. Building playoff-like habits does.
8. Matthews has known Joseph Woll since their days at the U.S. National Team Development Program. The forward consoled him for a good stretch following Nick Cousins’ overtime winner.
What did the superstar centre say to the rookie goalie?
“Just positive things,” Woll said. “Maybe I’ll keep the specifics between us. But I think he’s coming together as a leader, and just his ability to pick people up is nice.”
9. Kinda wild that a roster chiefly overseen by one of the all-time leaders in Gordie Howe hat tricks (Brendan Shanahan) gained a reputation for a lack of toughness.
10. Starts of periods, starts of games, starts of series…
The original sin of this Maple Leafs core will be not starting on time, and believing they’ll have enough of it later to figure things out.
11. I feel for Keefe, especially. He ate, slept, and breathed Leafs, constantly brainstorming for every edge. His postseason failures were not for a lack of trying.
When you contrast his line-matching and deployment-tweaking style to the more consistent rollouts of opponents Jon Cooper and Paul Maurice, you wonder if less can be more.
12. Matthew Tkachuk puffed his chest and proclaimed how the Panthers’ punishing physicality eventually took its toll on the Leafs, like it did to the Bruins before them.
Hard to argue when you see hits like this:
13. Etch Woll’s name in stone for Toronto’s 2023-24 opening night roster. The organization appears to have finally developed a homegrown goalie.
“This has been an incredible experience,” he said. “And I’m very grateful to have had it and help this team out in the future.”
14. This podium exchange between Florida’s Nick Cousins and my boy Joshua Clipperton (of the Canadian Press) was pretty, pretty good. Savage.
15. After Cousins’ series-clincher, unlikely crease driver Radko Gudas screamed right in Woll’s face. So locked in was Woll that, when asked about the celebration postgame, he said he didn’t even notice.
16. Yes, Gudas grabbed Calle Jarnkrok’s stick:
17. You can tell a lot about a goaltender from his positioning:
18. Luke Schenn is a real one:
Selfishly, I’d like him to re-sign in Toronto because he’s insightful and honest and a pleasure to cover from a reporter’s standpoint. Plus, he’s been a smooth fit to the right of Rielly.
But I’m sure colleague Iain MacIntyre would enjoy covering him back in Vancouver, where Schenn was beloved by the Canucks and their fans and their No. 1 defenceman.
He’ll have options, and few 33-year-olds have grinded as hard to earn the right to choose.
19. Beloved local radio broadcasters–slash–icons Jim Ralph and Joe Bowen are, as yet, not under contract for the 2023-24 season. They are masters of their craft and beauties through and through. Here is hoping this was not their final Leafs goal call:
20. Defenceman Justin Holl isn’t perfect. He’s streaky. He can be fallible. But he did not deserve the lopsided online ridicule from the fan base in 2022-23, just as he didn’t deserve 71 healthy scratches in 2018-19.
Holl had a rough go in the Tampa series, but he was excellent in Games 4 and 5 in the Florida series with T.J. Brodie on the shutdown pair.
Holl earned every penny of his modest $2 million salary, and fans will be shocked when they see how much he’s offered on the open market.
21. If Keefe could have a mulligan, I’d bet he’d go back and shelter defenceman Jake McCabe at the start of the series in favour of Holl and to get Brodie on the left side. The Panthers’ best forecheckers were all streaming down the right wing.
22. Not unlike Holl before him, McCabe, 29, will provide fine value at his $2 million cap hit for 2023-24 and 2024-25. He’ll learn from this long-awaited first taste of playoff hockey and should be properly slotted as a second- or third-pairing guy.
23. With a summer of rest, recovery, and training, I believe Mark Giordano may still be effective in limited minutes. And you can’t complain about the $800,000 price tag.
In hindsight, Toronto leaned too heavily on Gio in the regular season because of blueline injuries and because he was always up for another shift.
24. Can the Leafs re-sign forward Noel Acciari? They sure as heck should try.
25. Can the Leafs clone Noel Acciari? They sure as heck should try.
26. Maybe Toronto just needs a few more jerks.
27. Yes, we write to a mostly Canadian audience, but the Cats deserve full credit for their role in the Leafs’ demise.
“They come in here after knocking off the greatest team in the history of the league in the regular season, and keep that momentum coming right through here,” Keefe said.
“They’re a team that in the regular season had one of the best offences in the league, and it came through. In the playoffs, they competed hard and became a very good defensive team with elite goaltending.”
28. Get excited about rookie winger Matthew Knies. He’s ready for this.
29. There is no shame in moving a slowing John Tavares to the wing. Tampa’s Steven Stamkos is a winger now, and he’s still producing at an elite rate.
The question becomes: Who is fit to play 2C?
30. Maybe that’s Ryan O’Reilly, arguably the best centre on the UFA market and a guy who raves about his Maple Leafs days.
St. Louis will circle back, too, though.
31. I’ve always fancied the idea of Wild defenceman Matt Dumba as a Leaf. He’s a pending unrestricted free agent.
He and Minnesota love each other, but math is about to intervene.
32. Easy to say now, but one can’t help but wonder how this group would have fared had Dubas hired a free agent like Bruce Cassidy, Barry Trotz, Pete DeBoer, or Claude Julien last summer?
33. Morgan Rielly has always been the emotional nucleus, hasn’t he? No Leaf continually raises his game in spring like this guy.
34. William Nylander’s strength on the puck and unshakable confidence serve him just fine as a high-pressure performer. His contract is the easiest to trade, but his particular skill-set — one that Panthers coach Paul Maurice singled out as a unique challenge — is needed in Toronto.
Winning a Nylander trade feels unlikely.
35. The easy solution in net would be to re-sign RFA Ilya Samsonov. He loves Toronto. Fans and teammates adore him. And even with arbitration rights, his raise should be manageable.
But what if the Leafs thought about a splash and explored a trade for Connor Hellebuyck?
The workhorse is a bona fide No. 1, and he’s unsure if he wants to hang around Winnipeg beyond the final season on his current deal ($6.16 million AAV).
36. What is Brad Treliving up to?
37. I genuinely feel bad for Maple Leafs fans. They deserve better.
38. If Dubas moves on, Ottawa’s trajectory should be much more enticing than Pittsburgh’s for a young executive.
39. If — if — the Maple Leafs elect to trade one of their big young guns, they would be wise to do it before or at the draft.
Matthews and Marner have full no-move clauses kicking in on July 1, and Nylander’s 10-team no-trade clause begins on the same date.
Remember: Such a deadline spurred P.K. Subban’s trade out of Montreal.
Does the GM have a Masai Ujiri-like (or Bill Zito-like) blockbuster in him?
40. I absolutely loved covering Wayne Simmonds. Tons of respect for his game and his character.
41. Who knows if there even is a solution? Maybe this crisis is as paranormal as it is existential.
42. Matthews knows the sun will come up: “When you looked back on it, obviously you got to cherish the good moments that you had as well. Because we’re very blessed and very lucky to be doing what we’re doing.”
