Auston Matthews told this team to look in the mirror two nights before Colorado hung six on them at home. Nobody in the front office has taken that advice.
The Maple Leafs lost 6-3 to the Avalanche at Scotiabank Arena, their fourth straight defeat at home, and the building let them hear it. Gabriel Landeskog scored twice for Colorado, Mackenzie Blackwood stopped 28, and Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 22 in a game he didn't lose by himself. One sequence had three Toronto skaters converge on the wrong man and leave Landeskog alone in front, the kind of breakdown no goalie is bailing out.
The loudest argument in the city right now is that the answer is trading the core. Trade Matthews, Nylander, Tavares. Blow it up, start over, bring in grizzled veterans to replace the kids. It's an understandable scream after a stretch like this, but it's aimed at the wrong people.
RatingThe front office already blew something up this year. Brendan Shanahan is gone as team president. The coach from last season is gone, replaced by Jim Hiller. That's the full shake-up version of accountability, and it still produced a team that, 19 games in, carries the same record it had at this point a year ago, when it finished 28th overall after falling from 108 points to 78, the worst single-season collapse in franchise history, and got eliminated from playoff contention in March, ending the longest active postseason streak in the league. Changing the suits didn't change the product. So why would changing the captain?
The decision that deserves scrutiny is the one that put a $21 million, three-year contract in front of Sergei Bobrovsky over the summer. Through his first dozen-ish starts in Toronto he's allowed three or more goals in almost every outing, carrying a save percentage in the high .880s and a goals-against average north of 3.30. He was already trending old and shaky in Florida, and Toronto paid a premium to import the decline. Pair that with a defense that was porous as recently as last season, and you get a far more honest explanation for four straight home losses than "Matthews doesn't want it anymore."
Maybe the fix is incremental, and this group just needs the rest of the homestand to find itself before Minnesota and Edmonton come to town. Fine. But there's a difference between patience with the roster and patience with the people who built it. Nobody is calling for Bobrovsky's $21 million deal to be reconsidered. Everyone is calling for a captain with two years left on a team-friendly number to be shipped out. That's a mob looking for the easiest name to blame.
Keith Pelley once said this franchise is here to win (not sell jerseys). That line is two years old now and it still sounds like a man describing a plan he's never executed. Fire the people who thought an aging, declining goaltender was the fix. Leave the core alone. Trading Matthews now would be a panic move, and it's the fastest way to turn a bad month into a lost decade.
