Crisis won’t force GM’s hand
Leafs’ Nonis calling for patience after pair of humiliating losses
TORONTO — Patience is an ugly word to the impatient fan.
Hand over the keys to the Toronto Maple Leafs and those who have not yet tossed their jerseys onto the ice would surely go wild. They would immediately fire Randy Carlyle and probably trade Dion Phaneuf. Heck, they might even bench Phil Kessel just for the fun of it.
The last thing they would do is park the car in the garage and shut the door.
Yet, that is exactly what general manager Dave Nonis intends to do. A day after the Leafs lost 9-2 to the Nashville Predators, which came days after the team lost 6-2 to the comically bad Buffalo Sabres, Nonis came out preaching patience to a fan base that is clutching torches and pitchforks and screaming for change.
He said he would not fire Carlyle because of a couple of embarrassing losses. He would not make a trade for the sake of making a trade. He would not overreact.
“You can do a lot of damage in the long-term success of your team by overreacting,” Nonis said after watching the Leafs practice Wednesday. “If there’s a deal to be made that will help us, then we’ll do it. If not, it’s up to this group to get their play back to where it was. It’s not like we’re asking them to do something they’ve never done before. We’re asking to play like they did seven days ago.
“That shouldn’t be too much to ask.”
As Nonis said, no one was questioning Carlyle’s job security after the Leafs defeated the Boston Bruins 6-1 last week and went on a 6-11 run. But don’t forget, before that the Leafs had been blown out by Pittsburgh, Detroit and Boston.
In other words, this is not a mere two-game blip in an 82-game schedule, but rather another example of a team that has shown no understanding of the word consistency. Some nights, the Leafs look like they could be a playoff team. On others, they look like they could be in the Connor McDavid sweepstakes.
“Consistency is probably the biggest issue that we’ve had,” said Nonis, who has seen enough of the good that he believes it can be sustained if the players are willing to buy into Carlyle’s system.
“Over that eight-game period, we played some pretty good hockey against some pretty good teams and we have to get back to that. We can’t take a week off and expect your team to perform … we’re not a good enough team to take nights off and expect points.”
As deflating as the recent losses might have seemed, they still only counted for two points in the standings. The Leafs are still one game above .500 and are tied for the last wild card spot in the Eastern Conference. It is not quite as bad as it looks. Yet.
We’ll see if that changes after Thursday’s game against the Tampa Bay Lightning or Saturday’s game against the Detroit Red Wings. But for now, management is hoping the team can work through this on its own. This is less about having confidence in the coaching staff and core group of players and more about not having any options available.
At this point in the season, the worst thing to do is make a kneejerk reaction. Nonis knows that. He understands that the rest of the league is waiting for him to trade a Jake Gardiner or a Nazem Kadri for something — anything — in an attempt to shake things up in the dressing room. But that is how you make mistakes.
And this team is not in need of a quick fix. It needs major surgery.
That does not happen overnight. It happens in the summer, when you might be able to replace Carlyle with Detroit’s Mike Babcock and find trading partners for Phaneuf, Joffrey Lupul and some other key pieces.
“We’re going to be as patient as we have to be,” Nonis said. “We’re not going to make a deal just to make one, we’re not going to do some things that would look pretty or sexy, but would set our team backwards. We’re not going to trade a young player for an old one. We just need to get back to where we were not too long ago.
“It’s easy to put blame on the coach. It’s the first thing people talk about — media, fans, whatever. As a group, we have to do a better job.”