LFR19 – Game 22 – Fork – Maple Leafs 2, Canadiens 5

LFR19 – Game 22 – Fork – Maple Leafs 2, Canadiens 5

Oh man, that was game number 22. And in a season there’s 82. 82 games. 82 games. That’s so many games. Let’s go. It starts with an A and ends with anxiety. Off the charts levels of passion. That’s just a with you wherever you are. Welcome to LFOs. [Applause] Leafs lose 5 to2 to the Montreal Canadians Saturday night on hockey night in Canada. I want to take a very different approach to this LFR video. But first, before we go deeper into the Leafs game, let me tell you about Tingly. Tingly is an experience gift voucher wrapped beautifully in a box. It gives your loved ones the freedom to choose from over 150,000 experiences worldwide. It can be used while traveling or right at home. Recipients of the gift choose their experience themselves, saving you the stress of trying to find the perfect gift. It’s more meaningful than cash, but just as flexible. Create a lasting memory for an important person in your life without adding clutter. When looking for an experience, I typed in the word kayak cuz I like to kayak. And I found the Kayak Seion Con experience in Tulum. That’s in Mexico. My wife’s going to be like, “Kaying, this sounds like a trip for you.” And I’m going to be like, “No, you said you love kayaking.” We’re going to love it. It’s going to be a great time. Anyway, enough about me. Today, you can get an exclusive Tingly deal. Use code Steve for 33% off all experiences at tingly.com. ti ggl.com/stevedangle. hit on it now and experience Tingly. Okay. All right. All right. Okay. So, here’s the thing. I’m in uncharted territory with this team. I’ve never This is season 19, right? I’ve never mourned the Leafs on the way down. Now, they’ve been on their way down over the 19 years that I’ve been doing it, but I was usually happy with the fact that they were on their way down, right? There was no real expectations for them to win. And for the most part, we were like, you know what? Just rebuild. Just rebuild. Please do it. Oh, I didn’t want you to be bad this year, but you were bad. Eighth overall pick, ah, you get William Knander. I didn’t want the Horich year. Fourth overall pick, you get Mitch Mner. I know. Shut up. And then the next year, you actually do the thing properly and on purpose, you get Austin Matthews. I know, shut up. This is me dealing with the fact that they are suddenly overnight a 52- win division winning team who went to the second round and took the eventual Stanley Cup champions to game seven. They did all that to whatever this pile of excrement is. And I have lost my mind a bunch of times and gone and other times I was like you know very serious. So what do you do? What do you do now at game 22 when it’s like you can’t lose your mind every time? You can’t I can’t do this one like blow my top completely come undone like once a week. I can’t do that. Not for the whole season, dude. So, here’s what this LFR is. There’s thousands of people watching right now. I can tell. I can feel you. Every time I do a video, I’m alone in this room and I’m staring down the barrel of the camera. There’s no one here but me and the camera, but I know you’re all there. And I treat every video as if you were all there. Here’s who this video is for. There’s thousands of people watching. I don’t I It’s fine. It’s You can still watch, but this video isn’t for you. This message isn’t for you. It’s for the Leafs. This is for every player, everyone in the miners, every prospect, everyone on the coaching staff, everyone in the executive suite, every everyone in management, everyone on the analytics staff, training staff, everybody. This is just for the Toronto Maple Leafs organization. That was an embarrassing asskicking and you just made everybody forget how bad the last week has been for Montreal. How bad the last two weeks has been for Montreal. They are not winning games. They won this one. They everyone is hurt. Everyone half their lineup was injured just like the Leafs. But I want to start with a positive thought starter and here it is from Jake B. Leafs online. I think there’s two conversations he says. One is the depth guys are not very good and the team looks disjointed. The other is that four of the top eight guys on the team, including the three-time Rocket winner and starting goalie, are injured. Let’s relax a little on the wholesale changes. And he continues, Edmonton’s losing like this with their whole team playing. It happens. I know they just got Heyman back, but it’s still true. Not making an excuse, but living in reality. There’s a lot going wrong, but probably wouldn’t be nearly as bad if Max Doi, who is terrible, his words, not mine, wasn’t the second line center. Can we talk about Max Doi, the second line center? Remember last season when he wasn’t very good at center? Remember his entire Leafs tenure when he wasn’t very good at center and then you put him on the wing and he was better? Remember when he was drowning defensively, getting hemmed in all the time, didn’t score until Christmas, and then you put him on the Matthews Bertusi line. It was a little while ago, and it was great. Okay, so remember how there was a massive hole next to Matthews to start the season and uh Max Doi was the candidate out of camp to play next to him. I know there was an injury to Max, but that could have been like a one or two games and then you put him right back there kind of thing, right? Well, what happens in camp? Scott Lton gets hurt. Scott Lton who coming out of camp you had slotted as the 4C. What team, what moderately successful team loses their fourthline center and goes, “Oh, you know what? We got to take our number one right winger and slot him down to third line center. That doesn’t make any sense. What? Pardon? Heavens to what? And so now you got Machelli up there playing with Matthews. And like he’s a bet. He’s a bet. You got to remember this was the beginning of the season. He’s a bet that you were betting returns to form when he was a 50 plus point player. Last season was a healthy scratch on Utah. He didn’t even get to 20 points. He had like 18. He’s gonna have a terrible season with the Leafs and still probably beat that by a wide margin and it doesn’t really work. And do at center doesn’t really work because it never really works. Even tonight you could have gone Tvaris because he’s a center, Lton because he’s a center, Lorent because he has played an abundance of center at the NHL level and it went well and Quillin because he’s a center. You had Dakota Joshua play center tonight a little bit. Knander could play center. That’s something that you decided not to foster and abandon during his development in the American Hockey League. I have no idea why. But I’m open to anything other than ever playing that poor human being at center ever ever ever again. Here, if you need a visual aid, let me help you. This is a bowl of cereal. Okay. This is apple flavored Cheerios. Steve, aren’t those called Apple Jacks? Well, yeah. There’s Apple Jacks exist, but these are like apple cinnamon Cheerios. All right. Bone appetite. This is a fork. No. Couple times it works. Not really. Not really getting any milk though. Kind of feels like at the end of this I don’t know. Kind of kind of feels like this is awkward and not the way I should do this. And it kind of feels like I’m not enjoying my cereal to the fullest potential that I can. Oh. Oh, but what’s Oh, look. Oh, look. I got a spoon. I got a It’s a small one. It’s not particularly huge, but Oh my goodness. Wow. That was like a full mouthful that time. Oh my god, that’s so crazy. Imagine eating cereal with a spoon. Now, before you think I’m overreacting, I just want to say two things. You can’t overreact to this game. Number one, they got killed. They got toyed with. And it happened at the drop of a hat. And it was the weirdest thing. The first 10, 11, 12, maybe even 13 minutes of this game. Not only were the Leafs in it, they straight up looked like the better team. Dovish numerically, statistically had a good night. Did he look poised? No. He looked jumpy and kind of awkward in the net. I thought he looked super getable, super beatable. half the shots that came from distance, he looked surprised to receive. You should never be surprised to see a shot. You’re a goalie. That’s the gig. That was the guy at the other end of the ice. And Joseph Wool was the guy in net for you. That’s got to be a win nine times out of 10. But the moment the Montreal Canadians score their first goal of the game, it’s over. They were click click click click. Harlem globe trotters with the passes, they made the Leafs look like children. They didn’t just son the Leafs, they uncle and grandfathered the Leafs. What the Montreal Canadiens did to the Leafs in a game that meant quite a bit to the standings, at least as they currently stand here in November. What the Habs did to the Leafs on Saturday night in Montreal at the Bell Center is one of the most embarrassing, definitive, and dominant asskickings I’ve ever seen the Habs give the Leafs. and I had to sit through the entire 2021 playoff series, including games five, six, and seven. Yeah, there were times during games five, six, and seven, it didn’t seem like the Leafs were ever going to be in it, even for a second. And even in those games, Montreal wasn’t slinging passes back and forth. How many onetimes did Joseph Wool stop on his own? That guy allowed four goals in less than two periods of play and was far and away the best player on the ice at minimum for the Leafs and maybe even anybody on the ice surface. I’m serious. I have never in all my life, in all my history watching this team, ever thought to myself, and you could go back and watch me on the stream. I screamed it into the camera. I have never thought to myself in a game where the Leafs goender was playing that well thought please pull him for his sake. He was the only one maybe him and Scott Lton were like the only ones trying complete balls to the walls 100,000% their hardest and I was like he is going to hurt himself. And to really punctuate things from James Myrtle the Leafs have one win in their last eight games. The last time that happened was 9 and a half years ago during the 2016 tank season. So again, are fans overreacting or just reacting? Now, forget those fans. I I don’t want to talk about those cranky fans. Uh again, I’m talking to the Leafs directly, and that includes the coaching staff. Craig Bub, what did you have to say after this game? Craig Bub on pulling Joseph Wool. We were just giving freebies to him. I just said I had enough about waking up a team or saving Wool’s energy. Both. We’re down a goalie already. So, both. I mean, that’s bleak. You pulled Wool to save him because you knew the team wasn’t going to do it. And also, they’re already down a goalie. Hey, by the way, when’s that guy coming back? He’s He’s day to day. He’s seven to 10 days. He’s week to week. He’s month to month. He’s in outer space. Where is Anthony? Well, I’ll get back to that in a minute. Craig continues, Craig on how Leafs can turn this around. Obviously, getting some people back in the lineup. Okay, he continues. That will help. But until we decide to dig in and play the right way for 60 minutes on a consistent basis, it’s going to be hard to pull yourselves out of anything. It’s game 22. What’s the most amount of games consecutively through those 22 where the Leafs looked like they gave a great effort the whole time all the way through? My answer is three. And it was the last three before this one. And their record was still one, one, and one. That’s one win and two losses, by the way. Don’t let that fool you. Oh, they’re 500. No, they’re not. They’re 1-1 and one. Three out of a possible six points. And they’re fortunate to get there. Okay. They had won three games in a row earlier this season. They looked awful during like two of them. How do you overreact to not being able to consistently play hockey well when you were an NHL team? You’re acting like there’s a paint chip on your car and people are going, “Sell the thing immediately. It’s a right off when what is actually happening is the back left bumper has been smashed in and the back left tire has flown off and people are going, “Uh-oh, that doesn’t look very good. It might be a writeoff.” And imagine how ridiculous you would look if you were like, “No, no, no. I think we can still get this thing back on the road and running fine.” I think you’re forgetting that panic is a large reason why humanity is still on this planet. Panic is what tells you to run away really fast because that Jaguar is about to eat you. What if you just stood there and you’re like, “Okay, I can’t lose my head here. The Jaguar might not even be looking at me. Run.” The Leafs have had an awful season. An awful season. You have a coach who sounds a lot like and has sounded like this for like a month now. Like he has no answers. The record’s terrible. There’s not a ton of evidence to believe that it’s going to get better anytime soon. And the one thing, the one little bit of hope that you’re clinging on to is they’re injured and just wait for them to not be injured, right? You can maybe sell that to fans. If the fans had any idea when any of the injured guys are coming back, which they don’t because you won’t tell us. We don’t need to know exact details, but we’d like to know who’s going to be in the lineup any given week. Can I tell you like all Leaf fans and the pressure, the reason they lose, can I tell you miserable sacks about the kind of person who was at this game tonight, producer Drew, he’s a Colorado Avalanche fan because he’s got some sense, but his brother-in-law is a Leaf fan like the like us idiots, right? Like them watching. You You ignore them, though. He drove from Kaledan, Ontario by himself to go to this Montreal Canadians game. So, I’m going to go ahead and guess like two and a half tanks of gas, something like 120 bucks. He had to do an Airbnb overnight. 250 bucks. Like purely guessing, right? So, we’re up to whatever that is now. Do you know what he paid for his ticket? I would have never done this, but do you know what he paid for his ticket? He sat No, Steve, I need some more info. I got it. He’s right in the corner. Seventh row, Bell Center, Saturday night, Leaf Sabs. Give me a couple seconds. $700. This guy paid over $1,000 and commuted round trip 10 hours 11 to watch you not even play half a hockey game. The consequence for him is you ruined his weekend. Right. For any of you, you make millions. You make hundreds of thousands, right? And what you got in front of you is a challenge. You’re in a ditch right now. Guys are injured. You’re down in the standings. Oh, man. You mean like a challenge at work? All of us have to deal with those. What? You can’t just throw your hands up and do nothing about it. So that’s it then. We’re losing because of injuries. So don’t ev everyone. Okay, you can watch again. Don’t go. The leafs are telling you from the rooftops they’re bad because everyone is hurt and because they are unwilling to tell you when the hurt players are coming back. Don’t go. Eat the ticket if you can afford it. Don’t go. Make sure that building is empty. Why should they go right now? I got a little sidetracked from what I was talking about with Craig Barube. He’s out of answers. He’s completely out of answers with this team. And now they have three days off Sunday, Monday, Tuesday until their next game. That used to be the most obvious kiss of death for a coach in the world. But now it sounds like firing Barube, which I don’t think he’s a bad coach, but he’s definitely lost the room and the injuries thing might float if they looked any good with any of those players who are hurt. Well, Carlo was doing great. Matthews, N was doing great, but they were awful with him, right? This would have been the kiss of death and you hire whoever the hell probably beat debor. I don’t know. Come up with something. It’s not my job to know. You guys, no one held this wasn’t a hostage situation when you applied for this job, was it? You all get paid handsomely to work what is a dream job for most people. Adapt. Figure it out. Give us something. Oh, Toronto. The NHL is barely a blip on the radar in North America, and that’s the truth. I wish it wasn’t, but it is. You don’t grasp that until something happens like the Jays are in the World Series and you witness how much of a cultural phenomenon that is. And in 2019, like you watch the NBA Finals come to town, right? You watch the stakes go that high. You watch the NFL any given week, go talk to anyone who follows the EPL, anyone who follows any kind of European soccer really, anyone who follows the NFL, and you tell them there’s a hockey team that thinks they can’t win because either the media or the fans or themselves put too much pressure on them, they will laugh at you because it is a laughable thing to say. I cannot do this for another 60 games. And by the way, this quote, Craig Vuv after the game, Craig Vuv has no timeline for Jake McCabe’s injury yet. Yeah, no kidding. Which has Jake McCabe returning to the lineup sometime between tomorrow and when the sun explodes. And what do we do then? Jake McCabe’s out. I don’t know. Just wait. You don’t have a first round pick. You gave it to a divisional rival who always beat you in the playoffs. Ah, Leaf fans are freaking out too much. You’re not freaking out enough and you never do. All this Marner stuff. Oh, the team look great with it. For years, you did the same thing over and over and over again. Great regular season. Great regular season. Great regular season. And I appreciate that you’re trying something else. Way, way, way too late. Kyle Dubis was the architect of that contract. And as way too expensive as it was, there was a fail safe built into it. He knew that by the summer of 2023, I’ll know whether or not we ought to keep the core four together. So Marner’s contract, no trade protection. And then the full no move kicks in on July 1. And what’d you do? You fired the guy. hired a new guy and wouldn’t let him do it or would let him do it, but you gave him like five weeks of runway. Hi, Brad. Great to meet you. Here’s your poison pill. And the guy who made the decision to get rid of Dubis, he’s gone, by the way. Because he had a boss come in and was like, “Well, I just got here, so I’m not going to fire Shanahan.” And now that’s the guy who’s making all the decisions, and I hope he’s watching this, too. You’re not panicking enough, and you’re not giving Leave fans the credit they deserve. We’re not children. We’re definitely not children because why on earth would a child want to watch any of this? I used to work at a popular Toronto uh tourist attraction. It’s called the Toronto Zoo. When I started working there in 2005, Leaf Stuff by 2008, no one was wearing Leaf Stuff. 2009. Ew. The kids were all wearing Kane, Taves, Gatslaf, Perry. Who were the other good teams at the time? Dowy was a little Oh, Crosby, Malcin, Oie, Thornton. Oh, there were still Leaf fans wearing jerseys and shirts and stuff. Yeah, with Gustoson 50 on the back. Say what you will about the futility of the Leafs of the last few years, but they did a real great job bringing in the next generation of Leaf fans, and now they’re all going to be just as fed up and just as jaded with the crest, except faster than their predecessors and with frankly less money to blow on the Leafs in general. I already know from many stories, people coming up to Adam, people coming up to me of season seat holders who are pissed off. The Raptors are good and there are some fans who are 5050 or 40 60. You have the option to go to a Leaf game now or a Raptors game. What do you think people are picking? Your company has the option to get season seats for the Leafs or the Raptors or the Jays. The Leafs are fifth out of three there. I don’t know how many other ways I can say it. You are not reacting enough. The pain you are feeling right now is your hand telling you to pull it out of the fire. It is not overreacting to not enjoy the sensation of burning. Or you could just leave your hand in the fire and ignore the whines and cries of us ignorant unwashed and wonder what that lovely smell is. No one’s forcing you to do this job. Just you. You want it or not. That is it for this one. Thank you very much for watching. Click like if you like this video. Click subscribe if you really liked it. Tell all your friends they got three days off. And you know what? We’re going to get practice lines in a couple days with 11 in the middle on line two.

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Steve Dangle recaps and analyzes Game 22 of the Toronto Maple Leafs season against the Montreal Canadiens

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