The analyst Craig Buttons comments following last nights debacle against St Louis , combined with other expert insights have made for some introspective thoughts:
His summary of the game was that “the Leafs were beaten to the puck all night long, they lost the physical battles on the boards-the reason there was no room out there was because they couldn’t create any.
The “expert insight” heard elsewhere was that the word was out in the league on how to play the Leafs; no penalties, clog the middle, force them to the boards, be physical”. He also opined that the Leafs lacked the colourful character(s) that could inject needed energy when needed (like a Bob Kelly could do with the Flyers years ago)
Is the numbing trap that St Louis threw on us a harbinger of things to come? Are we going to be watching many such games where we can never seem to muster any sustained possession? Are we doomed to “dump and chase”, forced on us by our opponents, with players not suited for that type of game? Is Shanahan’s template of clean quick talent fatally flawed, good in “loosely, goosey early October only? Should every talented tandem, be it Matthews/Kapanen or Tavares/Marner, should each line have the beefy large winger for those board battles? Should we sacrifice some defensive finesse and puck handling for a few Josh Manson types that will punish enemy forwards that get too close?
I will cheer them always, ever since I fell in love with them in the late sixties, and I will yearn for every magical moment that we saw early on, I will never stop. This is not about firing the coach or how bad a particular player is, or bad refs, or how we are missing Nylander, I am looking at the foundation of this team.
What say you? Will we adjust? Do we have the right parts to combat and adjust to the “clogging” we will see? And this isn’t about toughness, God knows that’s been dissected, I don’t buy that we can be intimidated-look how we hit back at Boston in last years playoffs (I even added up the heights and weights of the Leafs roster and compared it to several other teams-we are no pushovers.
Will that be the solution? Will we see a much more physical team?
What say you? I hope you are a real fan, that you know they are trying their best, that you will tough it out through thick and thin.