For a sport that actually likes to tout how powerful its gamers are, hockey gamers don’t appear to have a lot tolerance for something that makes them really feel unhealthy within the slightest. At least on the ice. Morgan Rielly of Toronto was simply the most recent to moist himself when an opponent reminded him just a bit an excessive amount of that the Leafs had misplaced a sport:
Did you understand that Ridly Greig was breaking some unwritten rule which you can’t fireplace a slapshot into an empty web on the finish of the sport? Of course you didn’t, as a result of it might be a ridiculously silly rule to observe. No one cares if you happen to clinch an NBA sport with a breakaway dunk. If a participant could make {that a} 360 or reverse jam or one thing cool, a lot the higher. Baseball gamers like to fill their pants about dumb stuff, and but nobody appears to thoughts when a place participant pitching sees one among his choices cracked to Jupiter.
But no, that wouldn’t do for the Leafs and Rielly, who went Dale Hunter on Greig for his obvious crossing of a line that was solely within the Leafs’ or Rielly’s head. And if you happen to’re questioning what sort of institutional management could be occurring inside that Leafs room, right here’s the ol’ hand-steady-on-the-tiller Sheldon Keefe on what he considered his solely good d-man taking himself out of motion for the subsequent couple weeks, seemingly, over a nothing:
Given two days to replicate on his feedback with the belief that Rielly is having an in-person listening to and is extra sure to overlook six video games or extra, Keefe as soon as once more had his mind fluid drip down out of his mouth:
Dig up, silly.
The Leafs have misplaced contact with each the Panthers and Bruins within the Northeast, and now will spend the final 30 video games of the season scratching and clawing with Detroit for the ultimate automated spot, in addition to the Wings, Islanders, and anybody who else will get sizzling for even a wild-card spot. Which seemingly implies that nonetheless many playoff sequence the Leafs play, they received’t have dwelling ice for any of them. Not that that has ever saved them lately anyway.
Keefe most likely ought to concern himself with the truth that his workforce that’s loaded with velocity and scoring expertise is a middling rush workforce, or that his backside six is rubbish, or that his slow-ass protection is way too passive, which prevents the workforce from getting out within the open ice as a lot because it ought to. Or that their goalies are both damage, unhealthy, or each.
But no, that is what the Leafs are regarding themselves with. There’s an apparent reply right here, which is that if a workforce doesn’t need an opponent placing some taste on a game-clinching empty-net objective, the right technique is to not discover oneself in a scenario the place the goalie needs to be pulled in opposition to by far the division’s worst workforce. Don’t need to see the workforce on the opposite bench have fun a win? Great, beat them. Otherwise take the loss and shut up. But in Toronto, nobody ever accepts something and so they definitely by no means shut up about it. Go, Leafs, Go.
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