A coaching change won’t be all…

When the Toronto Maple Leafs fired Mike Babcock on November 20, 23 games into his fifth season as head coach, my first reaction was despondency. As a Leafs fan for 36 years, the firing of the coach has only meant that the team was not good enough, the coach was paying the price and a panicked rebuild was about to start. Roger Nielson, Pat Burns, Pat Quinn, Ron Wilson and Randy Carlyle were all good coaches fired because they’d lost the room; none were followed by genuine playoff success and most were followed by disaster.

Sheldon Keefe’s first month on the job has thus been a bit of a relief. After starting 9-10-4 with a 6-game losing streak under Babcock, the team has responded with a 13-4-1 record under Keefe to December 31. The players are more engaged and have played much more like the offensive powerhouse of the past 3 seasons. They are back in a playoff position. This is truly a talented team, playing with its old swagger. News reporting has turned positive. The coaching change has clearly been successful in the short run.

For me, this recovery is welcome, but it obscures the truth that this same core has played like this for 3 years and has still failed to launch in the playoffs. Last year in my spare time, I looked at a lot of NHL dynasties and found a surprisingly enduring pattern over the decades: rising teams have made noise in the playoffs within 3-4 years of…or they enter into what amounts to another rebuild. Eventual success hinged on some risky but successful transfusions of talent.

The signs of this are written all over this Leafs team. They sit 5th in the Eastern Conference but could be as low as 9th if Florida and Tampa Bay keep winning. Even in this hot streak, they still can’t play a full game, giving up too many 3rd period leads. They still struggle with defensive responsibility – in the past week, they’ve won 8-6 over Carolina, won a desperate 5-4 in overtime over a terrible New Jersey Devils team and lost 5-4 in overtime to the New York Rangers prior to their New Years Eve win. To this, add that the team has weak backup goaltending and has experienced a series of depth-testing injuries.

Wins are good but the warning signs tell me that they may not yet make the playoffs and may well face another first round exit if they do. There is a risk that a good regular season and the tumult of the coaching transition may provide an excuse to delay the necessary rebuild. There is an even bigger risk that another failure to launch will tell the rest of the league what I already suspect: that this team’s core does not have it, complicating any trade plans.

I think we need to accept that this is coming and start the rebuild now. Not a panic. No ‘John Kordic for Russ Courtnall’ trades. No teardown like what happened to the Darryl Sittler Leafs of the 1970s. But a deliberate, hockey-based rebuild focused on transforming the excellent talent the team currently has into a different personality and balance of talent with a real chance to win. It will be painful losing some very talented and beloved youngsters from the current core. But it could also mean a real chance at playoff glory this year and a dynasty.

With the dawning of the new year and the new decade, I’ve decided to start sharing my thoughts and research, in this blog. I hope my insights will be entertaining and I look forward to hearing your feedback, positive and negative.

With any luck, this may actually be THE rebuild – and THE year – for this team.