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The evaluation period might not be over, but the reality has hit Leafs Nation.

This team is not very good, and it needs a face lift. Not a face lift to the bottom six this time, but to the top players on the team.

The real question, though, is who is going to do it?

The Leafs have nine players making at least $3M as a capped-out, lottery team, and current-GM Dave Nonis signed every one of those deals save for the JVR contract, which is easily the best bang-for-the-buck deal the team has locked in. Talk around town has centered around Burke’s mess needing to be cleaned up, but when he was fired he left cap space and two clear needs (a top 6 center and a partner for Dion Phaneuf); instead, the management team doubled down on wingers and traded for a goalie. He misread the team after success in the lockout year, he thought the D in particular was a lot better than it was, and last summer he didn’t promise the team would be strong but did want them to get back to being a hard working team. Who has watched the Leafs and thought that they work hard any time recently? The David Clarkson deal has been an unmitigated disaster, and is turning into a legacy contract for Dave Nonis (similar to how the Ryan O’Reilly fiasco hurt Jay Feaster). If the Leafs keep Nonis, they will do so with the hopes that he can help clean up his own mess, but the last two summers are an indication it is time for a change.

But can they replace the GM now? The NHL trade deadline is on March 2nd, only 39 days away. That is hardly enough time to hire a new guy and let him evaluate the roster and make a few shrewd trades. The current management group is inexperienced at the NHL level, with none of Brendan Shanahan, Brad Pridham, Kyle Dubas or Mark Hunter ever working for an NHL team in an official capacity before or really being ready to step in and be a GM.

What is more than likely is this: The Leafs finish the year as is, possibly trading a few pending UFAs they don’t want to bring back for some value versus losing them for free. Players who can become UFAs this summer include: Mike Santorelli, Daniel Winnik, Cody Franson, David Booth, Korbinian Holzer, and Trevor Smith. The question with all of them is pretty simple; the Leafs will need at least a year or two to get the mix right with this group, so can these players help the team win when that time comes? Both Santorelli and Winnik turn 30 this year, while Franson is turning 28. The team has to build for two or three seasons from now, and all three are in line for hefty raises, so if they can’t get them for a reasonable number or think they can’t be solid contributors down the road, they will have to cut bait.

As Pierre LeBrun noted yesterday, “Other teams [are] trying to take advantage of [the] Leafs’ situation. I think you’ll see moves before March 2 but bigger, more drastic moves [in the] off-season.” Everyone in the hockey world sees and hears what is happening in Toronto, from another collapse, to jersey tossing, to Kessel and Phaneuf being run out of town. Nobody is calling to save the day for the Leafs; they are calling to fleece them. So the team will have to wait until the draft, when things settle down and teams have a better idea of what the cap is going to be for next season. The Leafs only have three deals expiring after the 2015-2016 season (Frattin, Polak, Reimer), meaning they will be trying to move substantial contracts with dollars and term left on aging players.

Ultimately, the team is going to have to take a step back before it moves forward; that is the price you have to pay to clear contracts. This isn’t Muskoka-Five level bad, but it is going to take a lot of work and possibly require the taking back of some other dubious contracts to facilitate it. Leafs Nation is generally divided, but almost everyone can safely come to that conclusion at this point.

The first question, though, is who is going to be the guy in charge to do so? The current GM has his fingerprints all over this team; does it really make sense for him to be the guy trying to get them out of it?

Notes

  • It was revealed Stephane Robidas has been playing hurt with an upper body injury since November 1st. On that day the Leafs played the Blackhawks, and in his final shift he got crosschecked from behind in front of the net then sticked while on the ground here. He got up okay, so it’s tough to say definitively if that was the moment he got hurt, but the next game against Arizona he played a season low 11:48 three nights later. Nonis said earlier in the season Robidas is the first contract he would do-over, but the first year so far has essentially been a write-off. The 37 year old was understandably rusty to start the season coming off summer surgery, but when he began rounding into form (by my metrics his gap control increased drastically and he stopped giving up the zone so easily), he got hurt November 1st and played banged up from there on out. Robidas has been a solid top four for years, and was last season. Maybe this is the beginning of the end for him, maybe it’s just a write-off year due to injury.
  • Wrote about this earlier in the season, but it is readily apparent now—the team can’t come back from deficits. The Leafs have been scored on first in eight straight games. This season their win percentage is 25th in the league when trailing after the first period, despite being in the upper half of the league in goals per game. Against Anaheim, the team went into the third period down 3-0 and we had them recording one scoring chance in twenty minutes, which came when they pulled the goalie. Against St. Louis, they were down 1-0 going into the third and got out-chanced 11-4. St. Louis scored early to make it 2-0 that period, but the team didn’t record a home plate opportunity in the last 7+ minutes of the game. The team has a lot of deficiencies, but scoring power is not one of them. Sometimes, though, we’ve seen teams go up on them early and the Leafs just deflate.
  • Conversely, they have had a few strong efforts and not been rewarded. The dangers of Toronto are that losses get lumped together. Against LA, the team played very well on the road against an elite team, essentially losing 1-0. Against the Sharks, they pushed back at the end of the game (they were out-chanced, but only 7-6 in the third), and on their third game in four nights probably deserved a better fate than a regulation loss. The following game on Saturday against St. Louis, they started with one of their stronger periods of the season, throwing up 15 SOG and beating them in scoring opportunities 11-9 (10-6 at evens). The Hurricanes? The Leafs had 27 scoring opportunities to Carolina’s 17, while they dominated Ottawa last night in the final two periods. That doesn’t mean the team has been fine, and everything is okay, but we can also see how things are getting blown out of proportion here, too.
  • Putting Peter Horachek in charge right before the toughest road trip in hockey is just about the cruellest thing you can do to a coach. The team will be happy to have seven days to regroup and get healthy. How they look after this stretch when they settle into the system and get some practice time will be much more indicative of Horachek than this initial run of play.
  • Know someone who works with players on the mental side of hockey – I won’t name the player – and he had a kid who wanted to quit playing AAA hockey growing up because he was struggling and getting yelled at. The psychologist put together a highlight package of all the goals this player scored to remind him of how good he can be, and he decided to stay and keep playing. He plays in the NHL now, and has won a Cup. I bring up this story because things are never as bad as they seem, and I’ve always believed, “you’re never as good as you think when you’re winning, and you’re never as bad as you think when you’re losing.” The most important thing right now is for Leafs management to block out the noise and make smart, logical, prudent moves. Because right now in Leafs land, it is hard to find those three things being done.

Quotes

“Sometimes in the OHL, you can regroup on one big trade. We did that with sending Steve Mason to Kitchener. You regroup right away. But you can’t do that in the National Hockey League. You have to be very patient, and you have to develop players and draft properly. (For Mason, 19 at the time, Hunter’s Knights got 18-year-old forward Phil Varone and 18-year-old defenceman Steve Tarasuk plus picks in the second, third and fourth rounds of the 2011 OHL draft and a second-rounder in 2012.)”
– Mark Hunter, on the differences between the OHL and NHL.

The full Q & A with The Star can be found here, but this is something that has been in the back of my mind for a while. The Leafs have an extremely inexperienced management group on the NHL side of things, and the OHL is just a completely different league in terms of how to manage it (you can draft for need and get players from the draft that help immediately). Add in that the team currently isn’t that strong — and that the fans are getting restless, to put it nicely—and this is a pretty hectic job to get, quite literally, on the job training.

“He’s been basically our offensive catalyst most of the year and for a guy coming in as a rookie, there were question marks about him. Obviously he had a great resume with what he’d done in junior, (but) he’s just carried that over into pro hockey. He’s been defensively responsible, plays a complete game and is a guy that’s so easy to coach. If anything you have to reign him back. That’s a credit to him for his desire to be a better hockey player.”
Marlies Head Coach Gord Dineen

The full article can be found here. I don’t have much to add because I’ve talked about Brown a lot this year, but I just thought it was important to note how strong of a rookie season Brown is having in the minors.

“Under (Randy Carlyle), we used the walls more. The weak-side winger could blow the zone early if the puck was sent around the opposite side.”
– James Van Riemsdyk on the coaching difference for the breakout.

“We know they play one dimensional … Cheat for breakaways.”
– Drew Doughty, on the top line last year.

“I don’t think any of the top teams play that way.”
– Peter Horachek, on the team’s breakout and if he would revert back because of the sudden inability to score goals.

I think all these tweets pretty much go hand in hand, don’t you? “Culture change” is an overused term in sports, but it is pretty clear the Leafs need one due to how they approached the game under Carlyle. Right now we are seeing just the (painful) beginning. There is a lot of damage that needs to be worked through at the moment.

5 Things I Think I’d Do

  1. I think, for the time being, I would keep William Nylander and Connor Brown far away from this team. Both are exciting young players that can score in the Leafs organization, but the NHL team is a mess right now and the negativity swirling around the team is only increasing. Let them develop with the Marlies and get their reps under moderate to low attention. Maybe at the end of the season you can entertain the idea of having them play a few games in the NHL just to get their feet wet, but that’s about it.
  2. Conversely, I think I would give guys like Josh Leivo, Sam Carrick, and Stuart Percy every opportunity to play. All of them have flashed the ability to play in the NHL and the Leafs can use every cheap bit of production they can get for next season, and making next year’s team can, to a degree, begin now. Even Matt Frattin has strung together some good games, and I would like to see his play explored more. He’s older and the upside is no longer there, but he is signed for next season and I still find it hard to believe he can’t hold down a regular fourth line spot.
  3. I think Horachek has done a good job shuffling lines and experimenting, and that it should continue. Whether it’s moving Richard Panik up the line-up, splitting up JVR and Kessel, or whatever, it is worth trying new combinations and beginning to look forward. One thing I would like to see in particular is each of Gardiner and Rielly getting an opportunity to play with Dion Phaneuf.
  4. I think it sort of goes without saying, but the Leafs need to move quickly if they are going to bring back any of Franson, Santorelli, or Winnik. All three would really help a team in the playoff race that is contending this year, and since they are all cheap contract wise I bet a mini bidding war can be created. Especially for Franson.
  5. I think Bernier’s contract should come a lot cheaper than originally expected, and perhaps not with a huge term either. This is only his second year in Toronto, yes, but he’s turning 27 this year. He’s never proven he can be a full-time starter, play well, and stay healthy. At best he’s shown he’s very talented and he is still relatively young for a goalie, but how can you commit heavy term and dollars to a guy who has played 155 NHL games to this point and never had one good season, healthy, as a starter? He hasn’t earned it. That’s going to be a tough negotiation.