The Toronto Maple Leafs, the week of the trade deadline, currently sit just outside of the bottom ten as the 11th-worst team in the NHL. The current consensus is that the Maple Leafs should sell and try to scrape together assets for the future, since they traded all of those away.
Last year, at this time, the Maple Leafs were buyers at the deadline, had assets to trade, and were looking to make a deep run in the playoffs. They knew it was their final run with the Core Four, and they gave it all they had, but still came up short, losing to the Florida Panthers in seven games in the second round. So, how did they get to this point?
The Mishandling of Mitch Marner
The Mitch Marner situation dates back to the moment he signed his monstrous six-year extension worth $10,903,000 per year. There was a no-movement clause (NMC) attached to it that would kick in for the final two years of the contract. In the first four years, the Maple Leafs failed to make it out of the first round of the playoffs, and when they did, they quickly lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning in the second round. In the whole six years of Marner’s contract, not once did the Maple Leafs make it to the conference final.
After those first four wasted years, though, there were discussions on trading Marner before his NMC kicked in on July 1, 2023. However, right before that decision was made, the general manager (GM) at the time, Kyle Dubas, was relieved of his duties. The organization brought in Brad Treliving to be the new GM, and then Brendan Shanahan, who is also gone today and was the president at the time, decided for him. Instead, Shanahan called all of the Core Four, including Marner, and told them that they were going to be staying in Toronto.
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Last season, before the deadline, it was evident that Marner wasn’t going to be a Maple Leaf past his current contract. Because of that, Treliving and the Maple Leafs had a trade in place with the Carolina Hurricanes to acquire Mikko Rantanen, but Marner had to waive his NMC for it to happen. Marner said no to waiving his clause because he had a baby on the way, and it was fully within the rights of his contract to do so — they gave that clause to him. They then traded Marner to the Vegas Golden Knights and got Nicolas Roy in return, who is rumoured to be flipped at the deadline.
Since then, Shanahan and Dubas are both no longer with the organization, but their inability to manage their assets correctly is still lingering today.
The Team Has No Identity
The worst teams in the league have no identity. The Maple Leafs will never finish last with the likes of Auston Matthews and William Nylander, but that doesn’t mean that the team knows who they are, because they don’t.
Head coach Craig Berube shouldn’t coach another game for the Maple Leafs. He isn’t even a bad coach; he won a Stanley Cup with the St. Louis Blues and is highly respected around the league. However, he lost that locker room a long time ago, and it’s just getting worse. Treliving and Berube haven’t been on the same page throughout the whole season. The players don’t listen to him anymore. The Maple Leafs wait for the other team to get the puck and dictate play, and are too reactionary instead of being aggressive and attacking, for one. For everyone’s sake, it would be best if they let him go.
There’s a disconnect between ownership and fans, as well. MLSE (Rogers) views the fans as just customers. While the same thing can be said about other major teams, after years of early playoff exits and the team struggling this season, fans have finally started to have had enough.
This season, the ticket prices have gone up by 9%. What on-ice product justifies that price jump? After this season, they are going to go up even more, and the Sportsnet subscription price to watch the game from your couch is going to significantly increase as well. People are being priced out of their own team, and the ownership is doing it with an unwatchable, laughable product. Fans can’t look at this team and know what they are, because inside the locker room, the players don’t listen to the coaches.
The organization is in a tough spot. Ownership seems to be clueless, which leads to management being incompetent, which then extends down to the team, and ultimately, the fanbase asking what is going on. The team needs to retool but doesn’t have the assets to do so, and they’re still hesitant to sell, or really even make a trade in the first place; their last one was on July 16. Something needs to change, and it starts with the team selling their assets, and then the roster needs to be addressed over the offseason, and they need to come back with a completely different team next season in Toronto.
