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When the cold eye of blame is cast on the Toronto Maple Leafs for this NHL season, it is clear everyone from the chairman of the board down to the last player on the roster has to share the responsibility.
John Ferguson, the general manager who made too many mistakes in putting together the team, already paid his price with his job. Head coach Paul Maurice, who has one year left on his contract, will probably pay the same price, if not this week, then after the new GM is hired.
The new general manager – be it Brian Burke, Ken Holland, Jim Rutherford or any of the other candidates – will make many of the players pay with their jobs as well.
At this point, only the big bosses – Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment chairman Larry Tanenbaum and president Richard Peddie – are secure. They may only pay if the hiring of the next GM turns out as well as the hiring of Ferguson.
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For the third consecutive year, the Leafs players conducted the sad little ritual of cleaning out their lockers and offering the usual few words about why things went wrong. They then gathered at captain Mats Sundin's abode for a year-end party.
Maurice and interim general manager Cliff Fletcher will offer their takes on the 2007-08 season on Monday.
The Leafs finished out of the NHL playoffs for a variety of reasons, which add up to a lack of chemistry, determination and talent. They had a habit of embracing excuses, injuries being the favourite, which added to their charms. Hence the equal share of blame from the top to the bottom.
Collectively, the Leafs were a poor team at home, a poor team on special teams, a fatal flaw in today's NHL, and a poor team in one-goal games.
Individually, only Sundin and goaltender Vesa Toskala had outstanding seasons. The list of underachievers was long, with forwards Darcy Tucker and Jason Blake, defenceman Bryan McCabe and goaltender Andrew Raycroft leading the parade.
Under Maurice, the Leafs were never much good playing in front of their own fans. Their home record this season was 18-17-6, among the worst of the NHL's 30 teams. On the road, where they often lived up to their promises of playing the simpler game that suited them better, the Leafs were in the middle of the pack with a 18-18-5 record.
In those 41 home games, the Leafs scored 121 goals, 11 more than they scored on the road, but 26 goals fewer than the 147 they surrendered. Their worst losses also came at home, with the Carolina Hurricanes, Washington Capitals, Florida Panthers and Ottawa Senators all embarrassing them by margins of six goals or more.
Those were not signs of a team that could handle pressure. Nor was their record in one-goal games.
Overall, the Leafs had a 15-12-11 record in one-goal games. But that represents 11 losses in overtime or in shootouts, which means their straight won-loss record was 15-23, not the sign of a team with much determination.
The Leafs were also poor in two areas that became far more important in the post-lockout NHL, special teams and winning early in the season.
With the introduction of the three-point game, it became much more difficult for teams to make up ground late in the season in the playoff race. As the Leafs and several other teams showed in the last month, it is next to impossible to force your way into the playoffs if the teams you are pursuing can pick up a point by losing in overtime.
There was one month in particular where the Leafs blew it.
From Dec. 15 to Jan. 12, a period which ended with the disastrous California road trip that cost Ferguson his job, the Leafs had a 2-9-2 record. They ended that stretch with five consecutive losses and wound up with six of a possible 26 points, a punishing lapse given how close the playoff races are.
When the lockout ended, the NHL's idea of wooing disenchanted fans was to embrace new rules and new ways of calling the existing ones in order to bring scoring back to the game. That meant a fresh emphasis on special teams, as power plays became more plentiful. But the Leafs failed to adapt from the start.
This season, the Leafs power play was in the middle of the league with a success rate of 17.8 per cent. But it also surrendered 10 short-handed goals. The penalty killers were much worse, finishing near the bottom of the league with a success rate of 78 per cent.
For all of these factors, the coaches can be blamed as much as the players, which is why change is imminent.
