It's true both ways. There are blatant homers in this fan base who can never accept the team has issues. We can let in the first goal every game of the year, and when people freak out about it, there are people in the GDT going "it's just a bad start don't worry about it".
Last week, this team deserved everything they got. The loss to the Zamboni driver and the reaction was not all about one game like so many people pretend. It was a release of pent up frustration going back to last Jan where the Leafs fell into this pattern of low effort games. Jan onwards last season they paced as the 17th best team in the league.
Then they lose to Boston AGAIN, this time having the chance to win in games 6 and 7, say all the right things, the kids get paid big, and we come back to this season with the same problems, same lack of effort.
Ok cool. It's the coach. Fire Babcock and everything is good again. team looks better across the board for a month. And then the same patterns come back into the game.
Jan onwards they had the same record that got Babcock fired. And the team is falling out of a playoff spot, and it seemed no matter how much they talked, the result was the same. Poor efforts almost a week straight led up to that Canes loss. They beat the Pens, talked the talk, and then fell on their faces once again, same pattern for the past year.
So yeah, people let them have it. They told the team in no uncertain terms that they aren't as good as they think they are if they think they can skill their ways to wins. The same message Keefe had been giving for weeks (immature team stuff).
Now they've won 3 in a row. One to a tanking Panthers team, one to a tanking Vancouver team, and one to the Bolts where the third period they essentially were in a shell and barely made it out, and people want to pretend that 3 games erases a year of patterns.
Nah it doesn't to most of us who understand sample sizes and patterns. We need to see this urgency most games, with the poor effort being outliers. Not the other way around. We need to see urgency on defense like we've seen the past few games. We need to see the boys battling hard for pucks like they have been.
I look at the schedule and I see 16 games left. I see a playoff spot there for the taking. I want to see them work for it and earn it, and not fall ass backwords because another team sucked more than us down the stretch.
This is supposed to be a cup team and we haven't seen cup pedigree from them much this year. Maybe this is where they turn things around, but one thing is clear to me. Those who pretend there are no problems that are concerning for a supposed cup bound team after they win a game or two are no different than those who think the sky is falling after a bad game. Two sides of the same coin.