{"id":557891,"date":"2026-03-22T22:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T22:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/557891\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T22:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T22:58:12","slug":"half-hearted-maple-leafs-commit-to-the-tank-for-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/557891\/","title":{"rendered":"Half-hearted Maple Leafs commit to the tank. For now"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman Brandon Carlo deflects a shot on goal as goalie Joseph Woll follows the puck in the third period of Saturday’s 5-2 loss to the Ottawa Senators at the Canadian Tire Centre in Kanata, Ont.Marc DesRosiers\/Reuters<\/p>\n

After dithering over it for a while, the Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a> have decided that, yes, they will tank after all, thanks very much. <\/p>\n

On Saturday night, they visited Ottawa, coming off a goalie-abetted downer the night before. What\u2019d they do? They took out the other goalie. Anthony Stolarz was hit in the neck during warm-ups. He had to leave the game before he\u2019d technically entered it. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s next? Are they going to start cutting each other\u2019s brake lines?<\/p>\n

With Stolarz out, it was back to the guy who let you down the night before. Joseph Woll looked more like he was break dancing in front of a crowd than playing a sport. It didn\u2019t help that the Leafs allowed the Senators 30 more shots than they had.<\/p>\n

Ottawa Senators dominate Maple Leafs in 5-2 victory<\/a><\/p>\n

At this point, all the nonsense about pro athletes being incapable of playing badly on purpose is out the window. This club is out there skating laps, and not hot ones. <\/p>\n

Their white-flag moment was five of them standing around watching Auston Matthews get Nancy Kerrigan\u2019d and doing nothing about it. Yes, I\u2019m counting the goalie. He\u2019s out there in a jersey, isn\u2019t he?<\/p>\n

There are only two explanations for letting your captain get knee-capped with zero response \u2013 either you are so checked out that you no longer recognize the core tenets of hockey culture, or you hate the guy. I\u2019m not sure which is worse. <\/p>\n

Once that happened, this team was finished. Not the season. The team. A draft pick is not going to solve that problem. <\/p>\n

The Leafs\u2019 current plan seems to be surviving this epic defeat, gathering up some recruits over summer and then convincing everyone that victory is still assured. How does that work exactly?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say Matthews comes back with medium-term memory loss and doesn\u2019t recall that everyone on this club pushed him out of the moving getaway car. Let\u2019s say William Nylander meets the Ghost of Hockey Future and decides he doesn\u2019t want to be remembered as the most talented part-timer in NHL history. Let\u2019s say Morgan Rielly cracks time travel in the off-season and returns to camp at 24 years old. <\/p>\n

Maple Leafs captain Matthews undergoes knee surgery<\/a><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say all that. And then what? It\u2019s still the same team that went from Stanley Cup favourites to imagining the freedom at the draft lottery in the space of six months.<\/p>\n

Getting an 18-year-old right-handed-shot defenceman fifth overall isn\u2019t going to change any of that. I don\u2019t care if he\u2019s Bobby Orr. Whatever contribution he is going to make to this club\u2019s moribund culture is years off. If the Leafs did pick a winner, the likeliest outcome is that they\u2019d spend the next two or three seasons crushing his spirit. <\/p>\n

What the Leafs are in the midst of now isn\u2019t a tank or a rebuild or a continuation of the \u2018win now\u2019 policy. It\u2019s all of those things together.<\/p>\n

Currently, it\u2019s a tank. It will continue to be a tank if and until they get down to fifth-worst in the NHL, where their 2026 first-round pick is protected. If they manage that, it\u2019ll be a tank until the draft. Then, all of a sudden, it won\u2019t be a tank any more. It won\u2019t even be a rebuild. It\u2019ll be a retool. By September, they\u2019ll be contenders again.<\/p>\n

If they miss the draft pick (which, of course, they will), it\u2019s a retool right away. Just pull out this useless player and that total disappointment and replace them with hidden gems who\u2019ve already been on a half-dozen other teams and never made a difference anywhere. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Referee Garrett Rank signals for an upcoming interference penalty on Tim St\u00fctzle (18) of the Ottawa Senators on Saturday.Troy Parla\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Sure, they couldn\u2019t handle the pressure in San Jose or Nashville, but in the gentle, supportive embrace of Toronto, they will finally blossom into the hall of famers they were meant to be. Do that four or six times and you\u2019re pretty much guaranteed that next year is the year. It\u2019s just a matter of finding the right third-line centre to unlock it all. <\/p>\n

Or \u2013 and I\u2019m just throwing this out there for discussion\u2013- is it possible that the Leafs as you see them, and have been seeing them for some time, are the real Leafs? That maybe you don\u2019t need to check the underlying numbers to figure out that when it chokes like a duck and folds like a duck, it\u2019s a duck. <\/p>\n

If that\u2019s the case, draft or no draft, what we\u2019re actually talking about here is running this lemon at max RPMs until the engine blows. You fire some people on top, you swap in some new bit players and you fly everyone out to Arizona to kiss the hem of Matthews\u2019s bath robe while begging forgiveness. Then you show up on Day 1 of work pretending everything\u2019s fine. <\/p>\n

Put it this way \u2013 would it work at your job? Because their job is the same as yours. They just do it dressed funny. <\/p>\n

If everyone you work with hates what they do, resents their colleagues, is mostly in it for a paycheque, and can\u2019t be bothered to do decent work for the sake of pride, then things are not getting better. That\u2019s when you either blow everything up or fold the business. <\/p>\n

The Leafs are a special case in only one way \u2013 they don\u2019t need to be good to make money. They don\u2019t even need to care. They just need to say they\u2019re good and that they care. <\/p>\n

So if tanking is what gets everyone off their backs right now, they\u2019ll tank. Whether or not it works, the tank will be a success. The first two-month tank in history. This club is always innovating. <\/p>\n

By fall, they\u2019ll be good again. Promise. Just don\u2019t expect anything, and everything will always work out fine. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman Brandon Carlo deflects a shot on goal as goalie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,21363,85,22600],"class_list":["post-557891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-noastack","tag-sports","tag-topstory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}