I believe this might be the quietest Toronto Maple Leafs off-season I can ever remember.
Give team president Brendan Shanahan credit for not dragging out any suspense as he made the large and deep cuts to the Leafs’ front office and coaching staff just hours after this regular season had mercifully come to a conclusion.
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The only semblance of playoff-like suspense for Leafs fans was April 18’s NHL Draft Lottery Night in Canada, where even though the Leafs went into the final game (I mean, lottery ball) with the highest odds–the Leafs had a the best odds of any team to win the lottery before the last two-digit ball appeared–the flipping of a regular Toronto Maple Leafs card followed by the flipping of the gold Edmonton Oilers card by NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly was as crushing as a Game 7 overtime goal against.
Up next on Leafs fans’ radars is the pursuit of Mike Babcock as their next head coach. Whether he is the best man for the job is irrelevant to most fans. Whether it would be more advisable and prudent to have an actual general manager in place for the Leafs before hiring a coach is also irrelevant. Leaf fans need a “win” — they need some form of moral victory. I will watch with great interest who Brendan Shanahan anoints as the next general manager and the next coach of our beloved Toronto Maple Leafs.
Listen: Gord Stellick on Dean Blundell & Co.
Here are a few other observations that have struck me watching two rounds of great Stanley Cup playoff hockey:
I was in the crowd when the Norfolk Admirals won the Calder Cup against the Toronto Marlies in 2012. Though it was an on-ice victory for the Tampa Bay AHL affiliate, it was actually viewed as victory for both Toronto and Tampa Bay in the development of their fine young players. Two years later we see vivid evidence of this with Alex Killorn and Tyler Johnson playing on the most productive playoff line with Tampa Bay. We have no such comparable situation with the Maple Leafs.
Jon Cooper of Norfolk and Dallas Eakins of the Marlies were viewed as the two hottest young coaches on the verge of being hired in the NHL. Cooper is now in a Conference Final in Tampa Bay while Eakins is looking for his next hockey coaching destination after things didn’t work out in Edmonton. To be honest, the perception of the Leaf players for the last portion of their regular season was that it wouldn’t matter if their head coach was named Carlyle, Horacek, Eakins or Cooper; they performed as if there was a supply teacher overseeing them.
The playoff series win by Tampa Bay over the Montreal Canadiens was in large part due to the great Tampa offence, the top-scoring team in the NHL regular season. Goals are very hard to come by in the modern day NHL. Entering the calendar year 2015, the No. 1 scoring team in the NHL at was, believe it or not, the Toronto Maple Leafs! They started the new year with their most futile scoring month in their modern team history. What happened?
Teams like the Calgary Flames and Winnipeg Jets give Leafs fans hope that a retool or rebuild need not take as long as many worry it might. Part of that is the little positive acquisitions that are also a building block to team talent and depth. No need to dwell on Tuuka Rask or Alexander Steen or Anton Stralman. What about a guy like Joe Colborne playing effectively for Calgary? Why could he not find a home on the Leaf roster after they acquired the former Boston Bruin first-round pick in the Tomas Kaberle deal?
An off-season of never ending questions… hopefully leading to a season of many positive answers for the Maple Leafs.