I don’t think there’s any house cleaning that will come. At the end of the day it’s an upper echelon NHL team until proven otherwise and even if it doesn’t go as far as we’d like I think MLSE is happy. When I look at the big picture, the Leafs look like a model franchise compared to where the Blue Jays (Rogers) and the Raptors are post championship.
Keywords are POST CHAMPIONSHIP. LOL. Leafs won back in 67.
NBA is different as having a top 10 player if not top 5 player is a must to win the Championship. Having said that, still surprised that the Raptors missed playoffs the past few years.
The issue with the Jays is the development of their own players which is like the Leafs lite, as the players just not Alphas.
From a business standpoint. I don't think Leafs will ever lose money even if they have the Marlies playing as Leafs.
The thing is that do AM wants to stay in four years if Leafs is just a playoffs team?
He is byfar the biggest domino and he will make bank where ever he goes as long as he is the top goal scorer in the league.
Sometime it might take a few years for those big team culture change to finally see the results but all Winners go through that. Panthers, Vegas, Avs, TB and Blues. They all went through that before winning the Cup. None of them stuck with their core from the start.
IF TB traded MSL, their Capt and arguably their Franchise at that time, why can't Leafs do that with MM, Willie, JT, Reilly or even AM. I just don't see why the goal is the Leafs needing the core 5 to win the Cup instead of just Leafs winning the Cup with whatever players they have.
All of them are great players but I don't think any Cup winners in the past 10 years had anyone of them playing a huge role in winning the Cup.