The Biggest Question Facing the Leafs

It’s over halfway through the season, and the Leafs have proven to be what most expected – amazingly average. Great offence at the cost of some disastrous defence. The coaching change has helped, but it hasn’t immediately paid off, as most rational fans could have anticipated. But it hasn’t helped enough – again, as most rational fans could have anticipated.

This team has a couple of good pieces, and those pieces are the only things keeping them from being McDavid-level bad. Which is kind of the problem. The team isn’t good enough to contend, and not bad enough to get the pieces needed to contend. And with very few difference-makers coming up in the system, management finds themselves paralyzed.

It leads to the biggest question facing the Leafs:

Do you go all-in on Babcock or all-in on a rebuild?

You can’t have both. You can’t expect Babcock – this assuming he is an option – to come to Toronto if the plan is to fully rebuild. You can’t sell that to a guy that wants to win, and can do so in Detroit. If you try to sell him on the idea of guiding a young team to stardom, Detroit is still further ahead than Toronto, with Nyquist, Tatar, Jurco, Larkin, Mantha, Mrazek and Ouellette, among others. 

But you could maybe sell him on being that missing piece needed to get the most out of Kessel, Phaneuf, Franson, van Riemsdyk, Rielly, Gardiner, Lupul, and Kadri. Maybe. Even that is a question mark, but it’s an easier sell to a coach. But then you have to ask yourself – what are you trying to sell? And do you even believe in it? Do you think that Babcock – or any coach for that matter – can get a team with this roster to be a contender? The likely answer after watching this season is no.

So then what? You’re stuck. This team is a wild card team on its best day, and a lottery team on its worst. The truth lies somewhere in between, but that doesn’t help anything. In fact, that’s worse. That’s that typical Leafs territory – or “7-11” as Leiweke calls it, meaning it’s the one place you don’t want to end up at the end of a long night/season. Sure, a future building block might fall to you. Might. But if you want that sure thing, you have to be bad. You have to be real bad.

And being real bad is a tough pill to swallow for management. It not only means starting fresh, but it means you don’t get Babcock – or DeBoer, or Bylsma for that matter. With Horachek behind the bench now, things could be worse. But Horachek represents the educator style of coach, the kind that Babcock is known to be. This, a stark contrast to the motivator, which Carlyle embodied.

That makes Horachek a case study for management – can a different type of coach make this team not just better, but better enough. I think that is the question that lead to making the coaching change midseason. But if a Babcock-type coach can’t do anything with this roster, the question is kind of answered for you. Then the team is actually uncoachable – not that they refuse to listen, but in that they’re not talented enough to contend, no matter who coaches. And that’s on management.

The Leafs are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Major changes have to happen one way or another. But before those major changes can be made, a direction has to be chosen – there is still that one giant problem to solve:

Do you go all-in on Babcock or all-in on a rebuild?

It’s the question that Brendan Shanahan, Kyle Dubas, and Mark Hunter have to ask themselves. Because you can’t have both.