Welcome to Top-Shelf Takes, a weekly series from staff writer Mary Clarke all about the NHL. Lace up your skates as we dive deep into the epic highs and lows of this little sport called hockey.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are no stranger to disappointment. That being said, that disappointment usually doesn’t kick in until springtime around the first round of the playoffs, not after the first month of the season.
As November begins, the Maple Leafs are 4-4-2 and sit seventh in the Atlantic after blowing a 3-1 lead to the worst team in the NHL, the Anaheim Ducks, over the weekend. Overall, Toronto looks like a disjointed mess, with its biggest stars — Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, in particular — not scoring and a rash of injuries decimating the team’s blue line.
Hilariously, the only thing going right for the Maple Leafs at the moment is the goaltending of Ilya Samsonov, who’s stepped up big time for the injured Matt Murray and has posted a .920 save percentage in six games of work.
And yet, above all else, these Maple Leafs are playing scared hockey for the entire NHL to see.
Sheldon Keefe says the #leafs are fortunate to have 10 points with how they've played so far this season.
— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) November 1, 2022
If the Maple Leafs were any other team in the NHL, a 4-4-2 start to the season would be disappointing, not an apocalyptic event. But because it’s the Toronto Maple Leafs, whose history of playoff misfortunes stretch back decades and whose fanbase is considered the largest and most vocal in all the NHL, it’s a Big Deal™️.
On paper, this Maple Leafs team should be better than they are. Toronto is the only team in the NHL to have three players (Matthews, Marner, and John Tavares) making over $10 million a season on their payroll. Matthews, lest we all forget, won the Hart Trophy last season after a 60-goal, 106-point year while the Maple Leafs finished with the NHL’s second-best offense.
With top-tier talent comes sky-high expectations, and yet the Maple Leafs still flirt with first round exits at every opportunity. General manager Kyle Dubas has stayed the course with the team’s main core over the last few seasons, but by now it’s clear there’s something fundamentally wrong with this hockey team.
We all know what they say about the definition of insanity, after all.
The 2022-23 season is a make-or-break year for the Maple Leafs. Depending on how November goes, it might be a make-or-break month for Toronto when all is said and done. There’s a wealth of talent on this Maple Leafs team, but none of it matters when they’ve been unable to get past the mental blocks that have been holding them back for years.
Given the flat cap and the rarity of big in-season moves, it’s unrealistic to expect major changes from the Maple Leafs after the first few weeks of the season. That being said, things can’t continue on as they have been in Toronto. Whether they realize that now or in the spring after another first round loss, we’ll just have to wait and see.