Former Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke has finally come out publicly and delivered an impassioned rant about who is really to blame for this disastrous Leafs season.
This season has been a particularly rough one for the Maple Leafs, and though they did enter the Christmas break on a winning note, they still sit well outside of the playoff picture as we approach January of 2026.
There has been a lot of finger-pointing this year, with some blaming the GM, others blaming the coach, many blaming the players, and some suggesting that there’s enough blame to go around for all of the above.
Ex-Leafs GM Brian Burke pointing the finger at the players, not the coach or GM
If you ask former Leafs GM Brian Burke, though, he believes the onus is firmly on the players in this case. He, like many others, has been very vocal about the team not working hard enough. He revealed as much during a podcast appearance this week.
I don’t know who will make this team go, because they’ve been threatened, they’ve been yelled at, they’ve been castigated, they’ve been criticized, and nothing seems to motivate them. And I don’t think they work hard enough, and I don’t think that’s the coach’s job. I think the coach is supposed to prepare the team… that’s their goddamn job to be ready to play.”
The Leafs have had this narrative following them for several seasons now that they just don’t play hard enough, and with Burke’s latest comments, it’s coming up yet again.
We do tend to see some floating, some missed passes, some failed backchecks and forechecks, and the team does get outworked by the opposition on a fairly regular basis.
The question now is, how do they fix it? Who do they move? Who do they bring in? How do the navigate their way around no movement clauses and modified trade protection?
The team already subtracted one core piece in Mitch Marner this past summer, but who should be next? Morgan Rielly’s name has come up in trade chatter this season, and there is some early speculation that the team could ask Auston Matthews to waive his NMC if the window has closed and if a potential rebuild scenario is nearing.
There are no easy answers here, but one thing is for sure — pointing the finger at the players is finally becoming more acceptable in Toronto, because what we’ve seen from this group for the better part of the last decade is that this collection of players can’t seem to get it done, and people are growing tired of it.
Previously on Toronto Hockey Daily