What a difference a week can make, to say the least, in the world of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
All warm and fuzzy thoughts from a decisive home victory over the Boston Bruins on November 12th has given way to who should pay the price for back to back debacles in Buffalo on November 15th and hosting Nashville on November 18th.
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Adding fuel to the fire is that the Leafs have continued to deliver these putrid efforts in front of their home fans which only adds to the displeasure of the Toronto faithful. The game in Buffalo might as well have been a Toronto home game as Leaf fans made up about 80% of the fan base that saw the Leafs rain on their transborder party.
These few days will speak volumes about the mindset of Brendan Shanahan. He is the guy calling the shots on the hockey side for Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment and we will see if he has inclination for a knee jerk reaction. If that reaction is to fire head coach Randy Carlyle, Leaf history has shown that he deserves a little more rope before a final solution.
Doug Carpenter was coming off a very successful 1989-90 season in his first year as Leafs coach and seemed destined for a decent run behind the Leaf bench. Right out of the gate for the 1990-91 season that “decent run” was just 11 regular season games, the last 11 games Carpenter experienced as an NHL head coach, as he was fired after the 1-9-1 start by general manager Floyd Smith on October 26th, 1990.
This past weekend was a fabulous weekend to pay tribute to the memory of Pat Burns as he was inducted into the the Hockey Hall of Fame. A less favourable memory was his exit as Leafs coach on March 4th, 1996. That Leafs team had lost eight consecutive games culminating in a final 4-0 loss in Colorado as Burns cleaned out his office upon the team’s arrival back in Toronto and was headed east on Highway 401 in a matter of hours after leaving a good luck message to the team on the dressing room chalkboard.
It was Cliff Fletcher who faced the inevitable in firing the future Hall of Famer.
History repeated itself with Ron Wilson as head coach in March, 2012. General Manager Brian Burke had rewarded Wilson with a Christmas gift of a contract extension but even he found a 1-9-1 record in 11 games (identical to Carpenter’s start in 1990) forced his hand to fire Wilson as coach on March 2nd, 2012 and replace him with Carlyle who joined the team in Montreal in the middle of a short road trip.
The firings changed little. Tom Watt in 1990-91 and Randy Carlyle in 2011-2012 saw their teams fall short of the playoffs. Nick Beverley’s 1995-1996 team did qualify for the playoffs and were dispatched by the St. Louis Blues in the first round, comparable to what they probably would have done without any change.
Both Fletcher and Burke did some of their better work with a significant player trade to bolster the fortune of their struggling teams.
Cliff Fletcher’s first season as Leaf general manager, he rang in the New Year of 1992 in dismal fashion. His Leaf team had finished the 1991 calendar season with a 1-9-1 (yes that common thread) record in their final 11 games and were 4-16-3 overall in their last 23 games. This included a 12-1 humiliating in Pittsburgh on December 26th.
Almost unbelievably, Fletcher was able to swing the infamous 10-player trade with the Calgary Flames that included Doug Gilmour, Jamie Macoun and others that almost instantaneously changed the Leaf fortunes for the next few years.
Brian Burke couldn’t stomach ex-Leaf Andrew Raycroft taunting the Leaf crowd as he tended goal for the visiting Vancouver Canucks in a 5-3 Canuck victory on January 30th, 2010. This extended the Leaf winless streak to six games (0-4-2) and they had just two wins in their last 13 games overall (2-9-2).
As Burke told me on The Fan a few days later, “I sent six players on a plane to other destinations”. Two were underachievers Vesa Toskala and Jason Blake who were sent to Anaheim for Jean-Sebastien Giguere. Four were sent to Calgary in the deal that brought Dion Phaneuf to the Leafs.
Almost five years later Phaneuf and everyone else is “fair game” for criticism and possible action given the Leafs last two performances. It remains to be seen if Brendan Shanahan feels the need to send existing Leaf players elsewhere or welcome a new coach to town.
