If the little red button has any kind of ego, it likely feels pretty flattered right now thanks to all those Toronto Maple Leafs fans talking about how attractive it is. For many scarred Buds supporters, the idea of pushing a trigger that would reduce their team to rubble is an increasingly enticing—and likely cathartic—notion.
But just as things are never as simple as they seem when your team is winning 10 in a row and leading the NHL in goals-per-game, it’s crucial to remember that a tear-it-down rebuild brings absolutely zero guarantees. Any player will tell you a few things have to bounce your way to win a game, and the same principle applies when trying to mould a franchise from ground zero. From lottery luck to weak draft classes to players’ pride leading to a few too many victories, a lot of things can derail the plans of a perfectly putrid team. For that reason, Toronto’s best hope for a turnaround doesn’t necessarily involve a smoking crater so much as a shrewd decision or two at deeper spots in the draft.
In terms of the calls for extreme action, those voices are not falling on deaf ears here. In truth, it’s hard to know how anyone who’s witnessed the Leafs’ vexing plight—referring to both the short and long term—would look at the situation and not at least consider the idea of blowing it up.
At this point, everything should be on the table.
That said, being really bad still requires good breaks to work as a plan of attack. The Buffalo Sabres entered this season as obvious a candidate for last overall as we’ve seen in a while. Right now, the Sabres are living down to their billing as a 31-point team that’s lost 11 in a row. And you know what? Buffalo is still just two points out of 29th. Finish second-last, watch the third-worst team catch a break in the lottery and all of a sudden the two franchise-altering centres you eyed for a year are wearing the wrong colours.
And what if your down year coincides with the consensus top pick being a great player, but not the multi-dimensional stud teams dream of building around? Do you just try to pile up more losses the next season and hope for better bad fortune?
On the topic of high-end talent, it’s important to note the Leafs have much more of it than most teams you hear linked to tank talk. Do you remember what the last Pittsburgh Penguins team looked like before Sidney Crosby came along, or what state the Chicago Blackhawks were in a couple years before Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane arrived?
Frankly, there’s very little resemblance to a Toronto team that ices a lineup with three top-five draftees who are some version of young in Phil Kessel, James van Riemsdyk and sophomore defenceman Morgan Rielly. Zoom out a bit further and the Leafs still have a relatively green seventh overall pick in Nazem Kadri developing and the eighth pick in last year’s draft, William Nylander, just getting started in the AHL.
Nobody is suggesting a little more time is all that’s needed to cure what ails Toronto. But it is worth noting the team, ugly as things seem right now, is in no way bereft of talent that’s either arrived or emerging.
Of course, the same can be said of the Edmonton Oilers, and they’re the squad that could ruin Buffalo’s hurt-so-good plans. Edmonton, like Toronto, finds itself in unwanted territory because, beyond the part of the draft where highly-rated prospects smile with their new team on stage, the Oilers haven’t found nearly enough quality players.
The default mentality of many observers is to assume all the next-generation movers and shakers get sucked up in the first handful of picks. Debunking that misconception is as easy as looking at some of the teams ahead of Toronto in its own division. It’s incredible what the Detroit Red Wings have done without picking higher than 15th since 1991. And even allowing for the fact that scouting is a more thorough discipline now relative to when the Wings were first snagging unknown Europeans, consider Detroit is slowly replacing late picks Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk with the likes of Gustav Nyquist and Tomas Tatar, third- and second-rounders, respectively. Boston Bruins centre David Krejci led the 2011 and 2013 playoffs in scoring, and the B’s found him 63rd overall in 2004. And the guy who’s Boston’s best pivot and one of the most dominant two-way players in the game, Patrice Bergeron, was a second-rounder the year before that.
The Montreal Canadiens found their premier skater when they selected Norris Trophy-winning defenceman P.K. Subban 43rd overall in 2007. As for the team pacing all Atlantic Division clubs, the Tampa Bay Lighting definitely hit the jackpot when they snagged Steven Stamkos first overall in 2008 and Victor Hedman at No. 2 the following summer. Still, Tampa wouldn’t be a legit Cup contender without an incredible hunting season in 2011, a year in which it signed leading scorer Tyler Johnson as an undrafted free agent and found his linemates Nikita Kucherov (58th overall) and Ondrej Palat (208th) in the draft.
Again, those are just four teams with close proximity to the Leafs. Look around the league and you’ll find many more examples.
Can Toronto hope to replicate the success of its chief rivals? Maybe. The team cleared a lot of bodies out of the front office last summer and one of the new guys coming in, director of player personnel Mark Hunter, has a ton of experience with junior-aged players.
Trotting out a plan to better utilize the entire draft might not satiate the pitchfork-wielders demanding immediate action, but it really doesn’t require any more luck than trading all your good guys in the hopes of one day finding better ones. And that’s worth remembering the next time you start thinking about that pretty little button.