Todd: The Leafs continue to tolerate mediocrity

Montreal Gazette

19-05-2025

NHL
The Toronto Maple Leafs have been seeking the answer for so long now, they've forgotten the question.
What is the purpose of this annual exercise in failure? What is the goal? To put on a show and get good comments in the handshake line? To be satisfied that you took the defending champions to a Game 7 that became an abject exercise in public humiliation?
Or is it to win a Stanley Cup? You know, that bauble the Canadiens have won 10 times since the Leafs held their last parade.
A team is an organism, not an assemblage of individual talents. Yet 'team' is exactly the element that is missing in any shot of the Leafs bench. Where the young and enthusiastic Canadiens exude encouragement and mutual support, the Leafs are a disparate group of young men, each alone on his separate island, thinking of contracts or tee times or who knows what.
Do the ghosts in suits who run this organization still believe their vaunted Core Four can win a Cup? Or is it enough to go through the motions, to put up fat stats and sign even fatter contracts, so long as lobotomized fans are willing to shell out the Gross National Product of Burkina Faso for season tickets?
What does it do to a team when your arena is a mausoleum for an elimination game and the only sign of life comes from toxic twerp Justin Bieber, dressed for Halloween and having a good giggle with his wife behind the Leafs bench in the midst of this embarrassment?
Is it conceivable that the cheerleaders at Sportsnet and TSN will begin to hold this team accountable, the way the Canadiens are held accountable in Montreal? Is it acceptable to lose twice at home by 6-1 scores when you are meant to be a bona fide Stanley Cup contender? For the team captain to vanish as completely as Auston Matthews vanishes every spring?
Even the bellowing of the very scary Craig Berube was not enough to motivate this bunch. Instead, according to the anonymous gent who keeps track of these things, the Leafs have now gone 21,203 days without a Cup. Their failures are mythic.
Yet the hype machine grinds on, oblivious to reality. Outside southern Ontario, Leafs Elimination Day is an unofficial annual holiday, more so when we can celebrate on the Journée nationale des patriotes et Reine Victoria.
But for the national media in Toronto, the latest failure is the signal to crank the excuse machine into overdrive. It's unfair to the Leafs, goes the latest line, because they have to face so much pressure, the poor millionaire babies.
It's clear that the Leafs need to blow it up and start over. But like the Blue Jays, the Leafs have a management team that cares more about performance in the boardroom than winning on the diamond or the ice.
Don't expect it to change. This is what the Leafs are. It's in their DNA and no coach can change it. This team doesn't need a coach — it needs a psychiatrist.
To Marner or not to Marner: In Montreal, meanwhile, the question is whether the Canadiens should pursue free agent Mitch Marner, fresh off a 102-point season.
Marner's current cap hit is a shade below $11 million on a six-year deal. With the salary cap going up, he's going to command top dollar and term, even at age 28. Estimates of what Marner will get on an eight-year deal range from $13 million to $16 million per season.
It's too much money for the wrong position, especially when Montreal will need to sign Lane Hutson and Ivan Demidov to long-term deals. The Canadiens need size, sandpaper and a second-line centreman and Marner doesn't meet any of those criteria.
Besides, the Canadiens don't want to infect their room with Leaf Virus. Once that disease takes root, it's hard to eradicate.
Meanwhile in Montreal: The Victoire would need another half-century of failures to approach the level attained by the Leafs, but after another short and sweet postseason ouster, they need to sort out their playoff woes.
Through two seasons and two abbreviated semifinals, Montreal has won a single game and lost six. It's not as bad as it looks because all the games have been close, goaltending battles that could have gone either way. The PWHL is a goalie's league and the Victoire have now been goalied twice.
The cockamamie rule that the team with the best record gets to pick its opponent doesn't help. It furnishes motivation to the opponent ('you wanted us!') and tension to the higher seed.
But the rules are what they are and when you have the best female hockey player in the universe in Marie-Philip Poulin, more is expected. It's Montreal, not Toronto.
Now and forever.