The Leafs Are Playing Bad Hockey

I’m not even going to give this post the privilege of being called a “Leafs Postgame”, because that would imply that the Toronto Maple Leafs showed up to play a hockey game tonight. This wasn’t a hockey game. This was a joke.

I’m not going to break down what happened in detail. If you really need to see that, you can turn on your TV, or go to the NHL website, and put yourself through the misery of watching the highlights. In short, the Predators scored eight consecutive goals before the Leafs were able to respond, and then added one more for good measure, to end the game at a final of 9-2.

Nine goals to two. The last time the Toronto Maple Leafs gave up nine goals, they actually gave up twelve. This was thirteen twenty three years ago. The Leafs were horrawful on the roster sheet and facing Mario Lemieux’s Pittsburgh Penguins, a team en route to their second consecutive Stanley Cup.

It was still inexcusable. Within a week, Cliff Fletcher went on to make arguably the biggest trade in Leafs history, acquiring Doug Gilmour in a ten player deal. The Leafs went on to miss the playoffs, but weren’t embarrassed as bad moving forward. By the start of the following year, they had a new head coach, several new roster players, some key pieces had developed a bit more, and the team hit the gas pedal.

This Leafs team, on paper, isn’t the basement team that the 91/92 Leafs were. Which makes this loss, and the one to Buffalo before it all that much worse.

I don’t know what the correct response to this is. I’ve been advocating the firing of Randy Carlyle for almost two years now, but is this the camelback-breaking straw? Do you make a huge trade? Do you fire other people? Do you yell at Extra Skater, claiming that his graphs weren’t pretty enough to succeed?

These are decisions management has to make. But after being outscored at this magnitude in back-to-back games, something has to give.