What’s Wrong With The Maple Leafs? | SDP

What’s Wrong With The Maple Leafs? | SDP

that second period, like people were laughing at me because I said that’s the hardest I’ve ever seen the Habs dominate the Leafs and they’re like, “What about 2021?” Well, that single period though of hockey was globe trotder Like they outshot them what 16-1. But it wasn’t even the shots necessarily. It was them flinging the puck wherever the hell they wanted. And I’ve never in memory sat there and advocated for a goalie who was standing on his head. Wool was unbelievable in that game. They should have lost 10 nothing. I’m like seriously 10 nothing. I advocated for the Leafs to pull Wool just to save him. And they did. And they did. It took until the fourth goal, but like what the hell was he supposed to do? And with Anthony Stallers in witness protection, because they won’t tell us what the hell is going on other than he’s a ways away, which is not a measurement of time, uh they have to protect this goalie. And so they said, “All right, he’ll be we’re just going to go ahead and throw you to the Wolves.” And that seemed to get their attention. And what was funny, you know, the Leafs score late to make it 4-2. It wasn’t even that late. Like for them to come back at that point with the amount of time that was left. Like producer Drew is in my ear. The little scamp that he is. He’s like a comeback here would not even be that insane. Like the Leafs have uh plenty of comeback wins this season. The Habs have not been a particularly good third period team. Not a good goalending team either. Like Dobish has been Montabo has been unplayable. Dovish has been good. Dovish’s numbers in that game were good, but I thought he looked beatable. Like, I thought he looked shaky. And so, what I don’t understand is how between the ears this team is. Like, yeah, there’s injuries, but Craig Baruba keeps saying it. And like, I’m using his words as ammo for, well, maybe he needs to go because he cannot push the right buttons on this team. I don’t know if anyone can, which is the devil’s advocate for keeping them. Yeah. But he can’t push the buttons on this team to get them to pull the head their head out of their ass. They were fine for the first 12 minutes. They allow a goal, shut off. Um, and then once they pulled wool, they seem to like just boot back up. I don’t know how you fix that, Jesse. You know, one of the things Buru has said game after game after game, and this is something we’ve said for almost 10 years is until you dig in and play 60 minutes, you’re not going to see sustained success. Now, the team has been very, very lucky, and you mentioned this on the show last night with regular season success, but they had a lot of game breakers, and there was a lot of games, and we’ve talked about it on this show, and came up all the time where, you know, they where they wouldn’t play for 55 minutes and then score three goals in the last five, tie it up, break it to overtime, and win. It happened all the time. Yeah, they can’t do that anymore. And they got a lot of talent sitting on the on the sidelines. And I’ve seen people go, “Well, Montreal is officially better.” And maybe they are, but the the Leafs do have a lot of talent sitting on the sidelines. Is there any part of you that thinks, “Okay, we still haven’t seen the full Leafs yet.” I don’t know if that even matters at this point based on what we’ve how they’ve played even when they were the full Leafs at the beginning of the season. Now they’re going through this injury slump and they’re not playing well with the guys who are available to play with them. And then we’re getting to the point here. I know they’re like four points out of a playoff spot and people look at that, but they are last. And if there’s not something immediately where they’re climbing out of this hole, we just got to think about this season like it is a loss season and not not a loss season like everything’s death and everything like that. Oh my god, we’re losing our fandom and the team’s over. Just a year where nothing goes right in terms of a lost season and you step back and you re retool for next season because this does happen. This isn’t very common in what the Leafs have done for the last nine seasons. There is a reason that they currently have the longest consecutive playoff streak out of any team in the National Hockey League cuz you don’t usually go nine consecutive seasons without missing the playoffs. So, one of these years was bound to happen. Whether you want to blame it on the GM for not putting enough pieces together on the enough talent onto the roster for them to be competitive for the playoffs this year or if you’re blaming it on injuries, either way, we’re going to find out how the season plays out and we’re going to have some answers and you got to look towards next season. I was looking at um from 2016 to 2017, a cumulative results of the all of the teams in the National Hockey League. This is uh from like I said the 16 season, the beginning of it to the end of the 2025 season. In terms of total points or total wins accumulated, the Toronto Maple Leafs sit third. They have a 48 wins. They are four third in the NHL, third in the Atlantic. They they have 48 wins, 214 losses, and 78 ties in that span of time. Like Steve said, uh, they were third in the Atlantic because they only trail the Bruins and the Lightning. And you go by points as well, they are third. They have 894 points in that span. The shame of the Toronto Maple Leafs is that during this journey, they have nothing to show for it outside of the regular season. They they have one of the most successful franchises in this league over the course of a decade. That’s awesome. That is successful. That is a thumbs up to the Shanny era for doing something good in the regular season. But they always fell short in the playoffs. And we’re reaching the end of this point because this season I don’t think is going to go well. I think I have enough evidence to be confident in the rest of the season and say that this team is going to be either fighting for a playoff spot in the bottom of this in the bottom of the East playoff race or they’re going to miss entirely. I think we have enough evidence to say this is where it’s going and this is probably where it’s going to be barring a miracle. Uh-huh. So, this is the one year that they’re going to have the blip in the radar. That’s how you got to move forward. We had our success in the regular season. This isn’t going to be one of those years because these years tend to happen for very good teams. Last year was Boston and New York. Sometimes it’s Tampa. You brought up that Tampa franchise. Sometimes it’s Colorado. This happens. This is the Leafs year to wear that. Let’s all put on our shirts and wear it. Let me let me let me give you some stats here. The Leafs at home actually are not bad. I mean, by the way, I I also misspoke. St. Louis, Vancouver, Calgary, and Nashville are the only teams currently worse than the Leafs. Um, and that’s by points percentage, so that’s the most accurate way to look at it. Home and away splits are crazy. Uh, they are the reverse Rangers. Uh, 8, four, and three on the road, which is just eight and seven, by the way. I just want to throw that out there. That’s eight and seven. Uh, you mean at home? At home, excuse me. Yeah. And then away, they’re 1-6. Mhm. They’re the worst road team in the league. And they are about to, if I’m not mistaken, as of now, go on a five or six game road here. They’re in the middle of it. They’re in the middle. Excuse me. Okay. They got to come home in the middle of it. But yeah. Yeah. And I Anthony Petrelli wrote something that I thought that was crazy. He’s like compounding the issue is who they’ve lost to. He said they’ve played division rivals Montreal, Buffalo, Boston, and Detroit times total. Mhm. They’ve won two of those games with one of those wins coming in overtime. So, out of a possible 16 points, they grabbed four. You win two more of those games, you’re we’re like, we’re not even having this conversation. Because because the extra two, three, four points that you get from that puts you in a completely different conversation because of how tight things are. Now, uh, one of the things that he brought up and and one of the things that we’ve had under the microscope, and it’s probably been like the fifth or sixth most important story because the player hasn’t been playing, but Steve, right before Austin Matthews got hurt, you brought up his deployment and there was some I think it was somebody on Twitter that had it where he’s getting all these defensive zone starts and it’s crazy and whatever. And, you know, when he when he went down, he was not a point a game player and that was killing my fantasy team. Again, I’m just going to just bring that up, but I I want to say this. This is interesting. He said, “I was curious about the Leafs penalty kill.” This is Anthony Petrelli without Matthews. And so far, they are 11 for 12 or 9.7%. In five games, but they have Lton, Lorent, Yarn Croak, and even Nick Wah who appeared in two of those games. And it’s quite obvious that they’re good at it. Why are when Matthew Ny and Austin Matthews coming back, why are they immediately going to be slotted into that? Cuz we know that they will. And is that the right idea? Cuz now we have to get a little bit granular. We have to, you know, we’ve talked about Doy and the role Doy’s playing, the fact that he’s swimming. We’ve talked about the fact that that Doy McMahon Robertson line just does not work. Robertson who was like six points in six games hasn’t I think he’s got one goal in the last week and it was against Chicago because stifled this season. So are we going to you know before his injury uh Matthews was third among the forward group in short-handed on ice time per game at 153. Matthew was fourth at 142. Is it time for Craig Baru to trust the other guys to do that? Yes. And and let those guys score some goals. It’s time for them to try bloody anything. Enough. Like, I’m sitting here bashing my head against the wall. Like, okay, making trades is hard. The waiver wire is hard. Calling guys up is difficult and whatever. And the injury, but okay, you’re pointing out things that, okay, here’s what you have. Here’s how you can just use it a little differently. So, you use those guys more short-handed. You do a better job short-handed. You’re giving up fewer goals shorthanded. That allows Matthews and N to dominate the five on five ice time a little bit more. And come out fresh when the penalty’s over. Come out fresh when the penalty’s over because that’s one thing the Leafs don’t even really have now. You’re just throwing out these You’re throwing out three randoms really or it’s John Tvaris and his band of merry men. Um they stopped using William Knander on the penalty kill as well. Um, that’s probably good. It’s It is probably good. So, if we’re going to go This would allow you to throw out a juiced line. You could do like Matthews Tvaris Willie or you could do N Matthews Willie Tvaris Willie. N Matthews Willie Matthews N Tvaris if you really freaking wanted. Yeah, you could throw out all these different options. You can split them up so you can have some combination of Matthews, NY, Tavvaris, Knander, Cowan, you threw it out there, and we could maybe throw Robertson into that conversation. Somebody else do as a winger. Oh my god. Um, and then that those two lines are what dominates the five on five play while you let these other guys do what they’ve done their entire careers. W’s been a good player at that. That’s how they won a cup in Vegas. Lton, there’s a reason for years we were like, he’s going to be worth a first round pick and then he was um in a in a trade. Uh, Lorent, I I’m screaming at them to use him more because in the one opportunity you gave him to show what he can do in a bigger role, he thrived. Try something anything else because if they actually get everyone back and just go right back to what they were doing, it’s going to be a waste of everybody’s time. Jesse, last year the McMahon DOI Robertson line, even though it it hemorrhaged a lot of shots and and scoring chances, it did score goals. It seems like this year it’s not doing that either. Yeah. I don’t like that line because I think Robertson in particular has afforded himself a chance at playing somewhere better than that. Yes. Like when I see Domi out there, I don’t think that is a place for Robertson to be and I focus on him because he’s the one that’s really excelled in this lineup and out of the small victories that the Leafs have this year, he’s one of them. They’ve really found something here in that there’s a guy who wanted out of this city and now he’s kind of found a place and he’s really only successful when he’s playing in a in a top six role that’s a high scoring part of the lineup that’s like feeding him pucks with skilled players and right now Doi is not that they never have it. They never have the puck. Yeah. And that that line because because I don’t think Doi is playing at that level where he can complement Robertson’s game. So, I don’t think that’s a useful line at all for Brew to be deploying. Doi can’t complement Doiy’s game. He is not an NHL center. Stop doing it. Like, I’m open to him staying on the team, but if they play him one more game at center, I’m out. Like, they cannot play another moment at center with this team. I don’t care who’s out. People keep going, well, there’s injuries. I laid out how you can avoid doing that if you really wanted to. Um, you could have Tavvaris, Lton, Lorent, Quillin. Is that great? No, it’s it’s better. For the love of God, it’s better.

Steve Dangle, Adam Wylde and Jesse Blake break down the Toronto Maple Leafs embarrassing loss to the Montreal Canadiens and share thri thoughts on what they believe needs to change.

Watch the full show here: https://youtu.be/3VYp4zLPrJA

Buy SDP merch https://sdpnshop.ca/

Check out https://sdpn.ca/events to see The Steve Dangle Podcast live!

Watch hockey with us! Live on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLk7FZfwCEifCTX0vkKEaGg9otrW4Zl2k

Subscribe to the sdpn YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@sdpn?sub_confirmation=1Join

SDP VIP: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0a0z05HiddEn7k6OGnDprg/join
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/thestevedanglepodcast
Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sdpvip/subscribe –

Follow us on Twitter: @Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake

Follow us on Instagram: @SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.Blake

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/MtTmw9rrz7

For general inquiries email: info@sdpn.ca

Reach out to https://www.sdpn.ca/sales to connect with our sales team and discuss the opportunity to integrate your brand within our content!