The Toronto Maple Leafs really owe a lot to the Blue Jays at the moment. Could you imagine how the city would be reacting to a 3-3-1 start if fans were giving hockey their undivided attention right now?

Yes, it is early in the season. Yes, there have been some strong performances to celebrate. And, yes, as much as this is a poor start in a pillow soft opening month, there is enough talent to turn this around…

(I like big buts and I cannot lie.)

There needs to be some real accountability regarding the lineup card and some significant changes need to be made where things are clearly not working.

I’ve alluded to some of these issues previously. Max Domi is at best a hot mess and it’s a tough sell to say he belongs in an NHL lineup the way he’s playing.

The same can be said for Nick Robertson, Dakota Joshua, and Brandon Carlo. And it’s not just the players but it might be who has been playing with who and how the lineup is constructed and when the players on the ice. Craig Berube seems to be in over his head as much as every player that was expected to pick up the regular season slack for Mitch Marner. He can only deflect with “how ‘bout those Jays?” so often before the question shifts back to why Easton Cowan and Calle Jarnkrok are sitting over the slew of players they’ve outplayed this season.

Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that the guy who needed a 21% shooting percentage for his career year looks like Nick Ritchie most of the time. Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that the guy who looked good playing with Hampus Lindholm might need Hampus Lindholm to look good.

The problems the Leafs are having don’t stop there and for a team that needs to work on accountability, there are plenty of players begging to sit in favour of Easton Cowan, Philippe Myers, and Sammy Blais.

That’s not to say the Leafs issues stop there. While Knies has been producing more from Auston Matthews is going to be necessary this season.

And while John Tavares and William Nylander have been finding the back of the net, it would be nice if the second line could be trusted in more situations.

Quite simply, a lot of stuff isn’t working and despite the fact that there was always going to be a learning curve for this group getting used to each other, there is no chance the Leafs would accept these underwhelming results at any other point in the season. Exploring options and sending messages to players that aren’t deserving to be in the lineup is acceptable. You don’t need to write off Dakota Joshua at this point but it’s okay to let a $3.25M AAV player with just one assist in seven games know that you’d rather pay him to watch hockey at this point.

What Leafs fans were promised with Craig Berube was that he was going to be a tough, no nonsense coach that wasn’t going to accept the underwhelming performances that Sheldon Keefe did. It seems like Max Domi is a case in point to the contrary.

The Leafs have an interesting situation in the schedule with a home and home series with Buffalo this weekend. On paper, the Sabres are either the right team for players to break out of their funk or the right team for Craig Berube to test something new against. While the past seven games make the case for the latter, it will be interesting to see how much Berube believes that he has the right players together and it is only a matter of time for them to gel. Either way, if the Leafs come out of the weekend with even a split it will be closer to the point where tougher questions need to be asked about the state of the Leafs this season.