See you next year

Well, Dick Griffin didn't respond to my letter in his mailbag today, so I'm not going to give him the honour of having me writing about him this week. Instead, we turn our bewildered gaze to the shiny-headed namesake for this site, who today penned a hysterical, overwrought and reactionary piece that would make the chief of police of Malibu proud.

Not much hope for these Leafs

Rock bottom, and with Halloween still three weeks away.  

If you are going to hit rock bottom, wouldn't four games into the season be the best time to do it? Things can only get better, right? Lots of time to work on problems and get the team sorted out. I would think that hitting rock bottom in April would be much worse. (Or game one of the Stanley Cup finals, eh Sens fans).

By my count, the Leafs still have 78 games to play. No need to freak out and call the season a failure.

Losing 7-1 in humiliating fashion to the Hurricanes in the third home game of the season was a stunning pratfall for the Leafs, a group of athletes who once again had a lot of promises going into the season. Just more talk. Barely a bodycheck thrown last night, folks.

Okay, I was wrong. Move along people. Seasons over. Nothing to see here.

This was a club, from management through coaching through the player ranks, that vowed to use improved defence as a means to again qualify for post-season play.

The result after four games? Already 17 goals allowed, tied with Anaheim for the most in the NHL, with the champion Ducks having played one more game.

That total of 17 goals, you may have noticed, includes last night's 7-1 loss. Those of us who don't screech about the sky falling on the day following a big loss refer to these kind of things as an aberration. In four games, the Leafs have allowed 4,3,3, and 7 goals. One of those numbers sticks out like a sore thumb.

Of course, you could completely overreact to the one big score and write the Leafs obituary in the second week of October, or you could put the pen down and think this one through. Most teams, many of them quite good, get blown out at least once a year. If the Leafs give up 70 goals in their next ten games, then we can talk. We are talking about one game here. One game.

Anyone who watched last night's debacle knows that Vesa Toskala was actually one of the few players not deserving of blame (or, at least, too much blame). Sure he allowed seven goals, but it was one of those crazy nights when the bounces all went against him, the defence didn't bother to show up, and Bryan McCabe couldn't skate around the fucking net without falling on his useless ass. Only a damn fool would blame the goaltending for the Leafs current state.

Only Buffalo and Florida, both winless, have a worse goals-against average than the Leaf tandem of Vesa Toskala and Andrew Raycroft, who own a combined .865 save percentage.

It seems that Damien Cox clearly hasn't learned from Steve Simmons' grand folly; namely that - with the exception of free porno and baseballreference.com, obviously - the greatest thing about the internet is that you can type a reporters name into google and within seconds come up with an old article which you can use to bury said reporter. For example, there is this ESPN.com column that Cox wrote in November 2005:

In recent years, the wisest of the wise have decided that, like size, it isn't G.A.A. that matters most. After all, if a goalie faces five shots per game and lets in two, a flashy G.A.A. of 2.00 might not be telling you all you need to know.

Instead, save percentage, something those of us who watched the game before the Original 30 never even knew existed, has become the sexy measuring stick for goaltenders.

Like on-base percentage in baseball, save percentage has come to be seen as the true measure of what a goaltender is accomplishing every night.

The problem with this number, of course, is that it doesn't take into account the quality or difficulty of shots a goalie faces. Just how many he stops out of how many he faces.

Cox then rants on like a vulcanized-rubber version of Dick Griffin about how wins are what matters and stats are for nerds and whatever. The point is, Cox criticizes Toskala by using a stat that he himself thinks is bogus. Where is the acknowledgment of the quality and difficulty of the shots faced by Toskala last night? Since Cox clearly hasn't worked out the formula for his Awesome Shots per Save stat (or AS/S, if you will), he could have made his point by simply pointing out that Toskala lost, and therefore isn't very good. Because that would make just as much sense as anything else he has written here so far.

As coach Paul Maurice spoke to the media after the game, you could tell he was ready to explode as he squeezed out curt answers that really weren't answers at all.

When I was eight, my atom hockey team lost every single game we played. Season, tournaments, playoffs, you name it, we lost it. Thing is, coach never got upset with us. He knew we were terrible and there was nothing he could do about it. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure Maurice was so pissed off because he knew the Leafs can play much better than they did last night. He seems to have expected some effort from his players, and he sure as hell didn't get it last night. All of which leads me to believe that he doesn't believe that ONE REALLY BAD GAME will be indicative of the season as a whole.

"We expect to see it Thursday since we didn't have any tonight," he muttered when asked how his team could play with so little emotion in only the fourth game of the season.

Fourth game of the season. One game. 78 more to go.

How could it have gone this bad so soon?

So far the Leafs have outplayed Ottawa twice (but ended up losing), beaten the Habs, and then got blown away by the Hurricanes. So, in that small sample size, you could determine Leafs actually looked okay. Not great, but okay - even though four games is way too little to make any judgments for the entire season. Better than just using one game, though.

Well, since the majority of prognosticators in the hockey universe picked the Leafs to miss the playoffs, this is probably about where this team is going to be, hoping to be in the annual mud wrestle for the eighth and final Eastern Conference playoff berth.

Funny, what I've read in this column so far leads me to believe that the Leafs will be lucky to not be relegated to the Bolivian Second Division next year. A chance at eighth spot? Even though they are on pace to give up 3,321 goals (or something like that) this year? Really?

The team's top paid players - Mats Sundin (two goals in his last 24 games), Bryan McCabe, Tomas Kaberle, Darcy Tucker (pointless, minus-5 already) - have been inconsistent or mediocre so far. McCabe, who did score last night, seems to otherwise be in a complete fog as though he's uninterested in even trying to stand out.

So far. Four games. Small sample size. Cox. Ugh.

He's just puzzling to watch. A defenceman that big, that strong, that skilled and that well paid ($7.15 million U.S., tops on the team) should grab your attention now and then, but when McCabe does, it's often for all the wrong reasons. Indeed, he had the locals hooting in derision in the third period when, while trying to circle around his own net with the puck with his team on the power play, he inadvertently tripped over the back of the net and sent himself sprawling to the ice.

He's absolutely right about McCabe. Even Cox can't be wrong all the time.

Earlier, in the first period, he made it safely going the other way around, but mishandled the puck and then took a slashing penalty to put the Leafs a man down with only 1:45 played.

Mishandled the puck and took a stupid penalty...he only needed the breakaway pass to an opposing player to complete the patented Bryan McCabe hat-trick.

If this team is waiting for the 36-year-old Sundin to lead it every night again, it is headed for major trouble.

And that seems to be the case.

Classic. We're going to have to tackle Marty York tomorrow if we want to top this one.