Leafs are falling

It is getting rather critical lately, these Maple Leafs are lying down now and playing dead for opponents.

For the past few weeks, as the Maple Leafs have been sliding — winning only two of their last five games and seven of their last 17 — I have consistently heard from a group of fans who have a somewhat radical message.

They have been plying stinky hockey for 3 weeks, and it's got to stop or I just might jettison the whole lot of them.

They are a minority, sure, but they are not complete wingnuts, peddling obscure fantasies.
No, in fact, what they are doing is giving up on the season. And they want Kyle Dubas to, too.
The Leafs are on pace to make the playoffs right now. They have the 14th best record in the league, and they have been better since changing coaches back in mid-November. They score a ton of goals, even with all their injuries.
But, yeah, some members of the fan base want them to sell before the Feb. 24 trade deadline.
Their argument isn’t entirely without merit. They just don’t see the 2019-20 Leafs as being competitive enough to win, especially given their path goes through Boston and Tampa — if they can make the playoffs.
They see an injured team that is wholly inconsistent, going long stretches with inept defensive play combined with a No. 1 goaltender having the worst season of his career. They see a young club that isn’t well-built to win in the playoffs and a roster with a bunch of pending UFAs (namely Tyson Barrie, Jason Spezza, Kyle Clifford and Cody Ceci) who they could get something for before the deadline.
If you’re not going to win the Stanley Cup, they reason, why not save your bullets to take a run in a year when you will?
Why not get some futures that you can use to build up towards something that matters?
Tampa did this just three years ago. They started selling before the deadline in 2017, dealing away Brian Boyle, Ben Bishop, Valtteri Filppula and a couple other pieces and getting back some useful futures like Erik Cernak, who is playing a key role on their blue line now, when they’re a powerhouse.
They, too, were supposed to be a contender that year and instead ran into a pile of injuries and were in tough to make the playoffs. (Curiously enough, after trading away those pieces, they had a strong stretch run and missed the postseason by only a point, finishing just behind that rookie-filled Leafs team that faced Washington that year.)

There’s also the example of the Blues trading away Paul Stastny for a first-round pick at the 2018 trade deadline, when they were still in position to be a playoff team. (Coincidentally, that first rounder ended up being used on Rasmus Sandin, after the Leafs traded down to 29th spot.)
So it does happen, that teams move key assets even when they may still make the postseason. More now that the pre-cap era, to be sure.
I do not think, however, that it makes sense for the Leafs. For two reasons.

No. 1: The Leafs do not have a ton to sell right now.

Almost all of their players of value are under contract. Their four best forwards are all signed until 2024 or beyond. Alex Kerfoot, Kasperi Kapanen and Andreas Johnsson are all locked in two or three years beyond this one. They’ve got Zach Hyman and Frederik Andersen up in 2021, but are they really going to unload them now?
Hyman they probably want to keep. Andersen just isn’t going to be in demand, given the season he’s had and the thin market for goalies this late in the year.
Any trade you can cook up, that doesn’t involve their few pending UFAs, makes way more sense in the off-season, when they can more fully reconstruct their roster. And it makes sense as part of a package deal to improve where they’re weakest, which is on the right side of their defence.
Dubas is already trying to get better there, before the deadline if he can, but he wants to do so on a deal that makes sense long term. The Leafs aren’t out searching for rentals right now, so it’s not as if they’re mortgaging their future at this deadline. They’re trying to solve longstanding needs by making a hockey trade.
So if they’re going to be sellers, what exactly are they selling? Tyson Barrie?
For what — a second-round pick that has a 20 percent chance of playing in the NHL four years from now?
There’s no Ben Bishop-like asset on this roster, a player who created a no-brainer situation where there was (a) a ready-made replacement in house who Tampa wanted to turn the keys over to anyway and (b) the opportunity to get something for someone who would walk as a free agent. Barrie quite likely will walk, but that’s spilled milk — you’re not getting back a Nazem Kadri calibre player for him now.
You’re not getting much. So little, in fact, that you are probably better off holding onto him.
That’s because…

No. 2: The Leafs are not as bad as the critics are making them out to be.

They’re in the midst of an ugly stretch right now, absolutely. And Sunday’s loss in Buffalo. But you can’t let a month-long, injury-riddled skid define their season. Especially given how brutal the goaltending they were getting from Michael Hutchinson was. (He had an .892 save percentage under Sheldon Keefe. Andersen is down at just .905 under the new coach, too.)

Since they made the coaching change, the Leafs have the fifth-best record in the NHL. They lead the league in scoring over that time frame, by a considerable margin. They’ve been great on special teams. And they have the sixth-best goal differential league-wide, trailing only Tampa, Boston, Colorado, Columbus and Pittsburgh.

In fact, most of the Leafs underlying numbers under Keefe are as good or better than they were in the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons, when most considered Toronto to be a contending team.

That Keefe’s Leafs have produced those results despite a far higher number of injuries than any recent season is also important. Keefe hasn’t had Ilya Mikheyev, Morgan Rielly and Andreas Johnsson for nearly half the games he has coached. Jake Muzzin missed 10 of those 37 games as well. They’re currently expected to have everyone back by mid-April — save for perhaps Ilya Mikheyev — so that’s another argument in favour of trying to stick with the season.
So, too, is the strong initial play from new backup Jack Campbell, who has greatly improved their results early on with a .919 save percentage and 3-0-1 record.

Had Campbell been on the roster all season, it’s fair to argue the Leafs would be in a much different position right now — with at least several more points and a near-lock on a playoff spot. And no one would be talking about selling at the deadline.
Does any of that mean the Leafs would be the favourites in a series against the Bruins or Lightning?
This would be a harder call if they were on the outside looking in and had a key pending-UFA piece that could fetch a huge return on the trade market.. And I get why some Leafs fans felt left out, given it’s possible their GM doesn’t do anything — despite the on-ice struggles — before Monday’s deadline.
Selling doesn’t really make sense, though. Not when they’re more likely than not to make the playoffs. Not when they’ve just added an upgrade in goal. Not when they’ve got one of the best goal scorers in the NHL, the best power play in the league and their best defenceman is set to return from injury in a dozen games.

Kyle Dubas

That said, these next five games are going to be a huge test for this depleted roster. The Leafs have been struggling to get much from their depth forwards or their defencemen who are playing higher in the lineup; they’re going to need more from that group to get through this Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh-Carolina-Tampa-Florida stretch with even a 2-2-1 record.

Kyle Dubas is squarely sitting on the hot seat, and Brendan Shanahan will remove him ifthe Leafs fall out of the playoffs. Lou , where are you ?? His brand of "smart skilled play" just hasn't worked out, the Leafs couldn't compete for the Ice Capades these days.


They’re going to need a whole lot better effort than what they offered up in Buffalo.
The good news is I believe they can do that because, for long stretches this season, they’ve been a very solid hockey team. They also seem to elevate when they play tough competition.
That’s worth keeping in mind, as the deadline approaches and all the first-round picks start getting thrown around. The Leafs will be left out of that mix — but with good reason. They’ve still got a shot to shoot here, on the ice.
And who knows? Maybe they can find a way to add an impact defenceman over the next six days and improve their odds against the juggernauts they’re likely to face in April.