Toronto Maple Leafs are surprisingly underperforming

[Dempsey]

They way many others already are. Whats he waiting for?

He's a streaky scorer who at some point is likely to put up 20 goals in a 25 game stretch. When he does that and rises up the goal leaders, I'll be sure to ask you, "what are the other guys waiting for?". And I'm not even a Leafs fan, far from it actually.

 

[TheImpatientPanther]

The road ahead with THREE B2B and a pretty stiff test throughout minus a few.
Will be interested to see how their record shapes up versus the Atlantic

 

[PaulD]

He's a streaky scorer who at some point is likely to put up 20 goals in a 25 game stretch. When he does that and rises up the goal leaders, I'll be sure to ask you, "what are the other guys waiting for?". And I'm not even a Leafs fan, far from it actually.

For sure. Matthews can go on a tear at anytime. Likely will start with a hat trick then look out.
Team still looks soft and beatable in a series. Even with a hot AM

The leafs look more and more like the Oilers of last season. Top heavy talent up front with no depth. Suspect D and weak goaltending.
Except the Oil started out on a tear last season, then got stuffed into a nose dive.

 

[BLNY]

The team projected by many to be the clear favorite in Atlantic seems to be suffering a major performance crisis.

Their offense is underwhelming, Matthews has one goal this season, Marner is not playing his best, many defensive mistakes, Murray is injured, Kallgren is pretty mediocre.

Samsonov and Nylander look good though.

Will the Leafs rebound in style and go on a winning streak?

There's enough talent up front to contend, but it's come at the expense of other areas. That's not new. The core group is staring down the pipe of being coach killers. Even though Babcock was Lou's hire, I'd be surprised if Dubas gets to hire another coach. My gut says that MLSE will leave things alone for the year. If the results don't improve, they'll clean house.

 

[AvroArrow]

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The road ahead with THREE B2B and a pretty stiff test throughout minus a few.
Will be interested to see how their record shapes up versus the Atlantic

The performance in November is gonna crucial to see what direction this team goes in. I'm not optimistic with what I've seen so far, I would not be surprised if both Shanahan/Dubas are canned by the end of the month. I want to hope things turn around, but unless there's a serious shakeup I don't see it happening. Just have to wait and see if they can finally wake up and start playing hockey.

 

[Heldig]

Pretty early to panic. All but one team in the conference is at .500 or better.

 

[Tairy Greene]

Matthews cold and some key injuries (Muzzin, Murray, Liljgren) to an already average defense/goalie will do that. They likely turn it around at some point with the talent but they aren't a very inspiring team right now.

 

[BallardEra]

Didn’t they start 4-4-1 last season as well? As long as Matthews returns to form (which he will) they should be okay.

Maybe so but something is off this season. Last year they faced better teams during their first 10 games and the underlying metrics pointed towards them improving.

Not the case this season.

 

[Prairie Habs]

Clearly you can’t relax. EVERY TEAM goes on hot and cold streaks. Some shorter, some longer. Some teams take their cold streaks in December. Some take them in October. A cold streak in March counts the same as in November. The NHL season has ebbs and flows.

The Leafs had their cold streak in October this year (if you can even call 500-hockey a cold streak). If they’re hot for the remainder of the year - which is completely possible - who cares?

PERSPECTIVE
If the Leafs go 6-3-1 (6 wins, 4 losses - ”underperforming” but still reasonable)the remainder of the way, they’ll finish:

(48-25-9) for 105 points.

It’s likely they eclipse this by 5-10 points so I don’t even get why everyone in TDot is crying.

RELAX.

The fact you think 6-3-1 all season (107 point pace) is "underperforming" for the Leafs says a lot. If you think THAT is underperforming then you should be even more concerned about their 82 point pace right now. They are grossly under what you consider to be sub par.

 

[PunchImlach is Alive]

He took over a supposed Stanly cup contender and look at the list of goalies he has hand picked.

Ridiculous


Won't speak for anyone else but I can relax and notice the leafs stink at the same time.

Toronto fans just don't want it enough and the players don't want to play uninspired hockey. Fans aren't showing up prepared the same way the players are.

 

[The Panther]

Just glancing at the Leafs' schedule, their second batch of 10 games (i.e., games 11-20) looks a lot harder than the first 10 games. However, 8 of the latter 10 are at home, whereas only 4 of the first 10 were. On home ice, they're 3 and 1, so perhaps just more home games with 'fix' whatever's ailing them.

Presumably, they will beat Anaheim, right? Let's assume so. (If they don't, all bets are off.) In that case, they'll probably recover in games 11-20 and be in decent shape again.

However...

If they don't win a bunch of those 11-20 games, they're really in deep doo-doo because after that they have six out of seven games on the road.

Anyway, one thing at a time -- beat Anaheim, and then move forward...

 

[leafsfan5]

I still consider this to be the "post pre-season" time of the season. There is usually a ton of movement and odd streaks in the first dozen games of the season or so.

Toronto is still a top team in this league. It would be more concerning if the top scores were lighting it up and the depth was collapsing. We know those top players will get hot.

It's not about the record, it's about the patterns in their game. There is no growth, no learning from their mistakes. They still don't give a full effort, start games late and play down to their competition

 

[PeteEakins]

The leafs look more and more like the Oilers of last season. Top heavy talent up front with no depth. Suspect D and weak goaltending.

Last year’s iteration of the Edmonton Oilers finished the year with 100+ points and finished as an NHL Final Four team - a feat that the Toronto Maple Leafs have not accomplished in decades.

The Toronto Maple Leafs should be grateful and ASPIRE to be as “bad/sad/lowly/awful/laughingstock/unbalanced” as last year’s Edmonton Oilers for at least ONE season.

You can make a point without putting down another team - especially one that has achieved more success than yours.

 

[Michel Beauchamp]

Didn’t they start 4-4-1 last season as well? As long as Matthews returns to form (which he will) they should be okay.

I'm beating the same drum over and over again, but the quality of the teams they lost to this year is much lower than the ones they lost to last season...

So for the last time: RELAX.

Great self-advice...

 

[BardownMagic]

Dubas(dumb***) screwed the leafs so hard.

In:
Tavares
Inflated marner and matthews contracts
Unbalanced roster due to being nylander’s best bud forever!

Out:
Hyman
Kadri
Mikeyevev(?)
Johnson
Kapanen
Brown
Andersen

This man cost the leafs 2 cups for sure. Good thing he got his shot though, his uncle must be really proud!!!!

An entire top 6 gone.

Vezina level goalie gone.

No big three trade when they could have done a nylander + first + prospect/picks for a top pair d.

There are 1000 people on hfboards who could do that tool’s job better than him.

 

[Mr Positive]

It's not about the record, it's about the patterns in their game. There is no growth, no learning from their mistakes. They still don't give a full effort, start games late and play down to their competition

There are good and bad things about being in a hockey mad city, and I wonder if you are falling a bit into the bad part of it (not just you btw). You know your team better than I would, but the big issue with a pressure environment is that the memory is long. Like with the Oilers, when times were bad they were miserable because there was intense pressure to win right NOW because every year of missing the playoffs highlighted the failures of the rebuild, and it led to super aggressive actions that didn't work and bad decisions (basically all of the Chiarelli era, and before even).

The best feelings the Leafs had were when they pre-empted a season by saying they were freezing ticket prices and that the team would be bad (I think this was right after the Matthews draft). They primed the fanbase for low expectations. The pressure was vanished because the fans and media were on board. But, the team ended up over achieving.

The Leafs have been bad this year but the pressure will prevent the team from bouncing back, especially if numerious players and the coach now have the magnifying glass over them and people's jobs might be at stake in the short term.

Yes, this is concerning because it fits a pattern, either with the Leafs or with other coaches being tuned out by their teams, but it also fits the pattern that I brought up: early season zaniness. Just because there isn't a logical excuse of sucking, like the Avs for instance, doesn't mean that the reason is that the team is bad.

 

[voxel]

Given how much stronger the Atlantic is this year, it’s likely the Leafs end up 3rd or in a WC spot.

 

[PaulD]

Last year’s iteration of the Edmonton Oilers finished the year with 100+ points and finished as an NHL Final Four team - a feat that the Toronto Maple Leafs have not accomplished in decades.

The Toronto Maple Leafs should be grateful and ASPIRE to be as “bad/sad/lowly/awful/laughingstock/unbalanced” as last year’s Edmonton Oilers for at least ONE season.

You can make a point without putting down another team - especially one that has achieved more success than yours.

Guilty as charged. My bad.

Note * The Oil did impress the hell out of me last season come play off time.

 

[SSCBLUEJET]

Trotz will be their coach my December and fix their defensive play.

As an isles fan I’d be sick if this happened but it seems inevitable

Why would the future GM/HC of the Winnipeg Jets want to help the Leafs?
See how easy that was.

 

[SI90]

Why would the future GM/HC of the Winnipeg Jets want to help the Leafs?
See how easy that was.

We’ll see. Should have taken over WPG this summer

 

[SSCBLUEJET]

We’ll see. Should have taken over WPG this summer

Could a, should a, would of...
My God,I'm turning into a Leafs fan!

 

[boredmale]

Every hockey publication and media outlet has them as one of the top 3 favourites to win the cup.

And most of them just pandered to the biggest hockey market in the world. Most reasonable people realized Toronto is sort of in that second tier of teams and was a roster that had a lot of top end talent but lacks depth

 

[Jeremy2020]

I don't think the Leafs organization should overreact and I hope they keep this core, coach and management team in place for many, many years to come.

 

[ER89]

I'm not surprised.

Although its f***ing my fantasy team.

If you're not surprised why did you pick them in fantasy. Kinda dumb ....

 

[Golden_Jet]

Matthews only has 1 point 5 on 5, once that improves, team should improve as well.