In many ways, Marc Savard feels like the sacrificial lamb for what has been the worst start to a season in the Auston Matthews era.

With the losses piling up, someone had to go, and ultimately, the organization decided to wait on making a bigger change.

The power play’s a league-worst 12-for-90, so boom, there’s the reasoning for the move. In the grand scheme of things, will the Savard firing really do anything?Doubtful.

That’s where the conversation started on the Tuesday edition of Leafs Morning Take as Jay Rosehill returned after missing Monday’s show. Coming off an 0-3-0 road trip, which included am ugly 0-for-10 string on the power play, Brad Treliving was left with no choice. Not for anything but it should probably be looked at as a warning shot for some bigger moves. This team is in free fall mode, they need to start winning some games. Plain and simple.

Then, we previewed this matinee meeting with Pittsburgh prior to the three-day holiday break. Toronto’s dropped three in a row, outscored 14-4, Pittsburgh’s dropped eight of nine. Something has to give. Will the Leafs take care of business? All in all, it will be fascinating to see the lineup Craig Berube deploys, and most notably, what the power play looks like. They went 0-for-10 on that ugly road trip.

After that, Kevin McGran, who covers the Maple Leafs for The Toronto Star stopped by the show. Firstly, he weighed in on the Savard firing. After that, we talked about Berube’s future, Nylander’s struggle with confidence, and if this team will be capable of snapping out of this. Spoiler: McGran doesn’t think so. Lastly, he hit on his new book entitled, “Auston Matthews: A Life in Hockey.” As McGran noted, he wrote the majority of this book during Matthews’ incredible 69 goal campaign. Obviously, we got his opinion on the current version of Auston Matthews.

We’re going to take a few days off for the holiday break. With that in mind, we’ll be back on Monday to recap Toronto’s busy weekend as they host the rival Ottawa Senators on Saturday night before visiting Detroit on Sunday night.

Merry Christmas!

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