Today, millions of Toronto Maple Leafs fans, myself included, took to Twitter and Facebook to express joy, relief and, mostly, celebrate the fact that Randy Carlyle was relieved of his duties as head coach of the struggling franchise mired in mediocrity.
Maple Leaf fans have had little spurts of excitement throughout the year – we do every year, enjoying a wild six- or seven-game win streak before the averages play out and the feeling of pride turns into disappointment, and, eventually, anger. Leaf fans older than I, meaning anyone unfortunate to actually remember Harold Ballard, can attest to days when things were worse, but the carousel of skaters that wore the Blue and White over the past few seasons has been perhaps the most uninspiring 3-5 year period in franchise history. Individually, there’s Phil Kessel’s lightning-quick release that, alone, earns him a few goals a season that nobody else would score; there’s the loveable, agitating, International Man of Mystery, Leo Komarov, whose two-play play and consistency is to be admired; there’s also young parts like Morgan Reilly, Nazem Kadri and others who have been impressive and look like keepers. Collectively, however, watching this team has been like observing someone trying to get their life back together from an addiction, bad habit, or what have you. One week, you think everything is going to be good; it’s all fixed. But it never is, of course. You always know they’re going to fall back into old habits. And they do. They did. And now Carlyle is out of a job, and likely headed to the next Network that will have him reprise his role as a talking head whom nobody listens to.
Rightly or wrongly.
I’m opposed to sticking by my guns and confidently declaring a coach to be the cause of any team’s problems, and surely Carlyle can’t be everything that was wrong with this team. His demise may spark a five-game winning streak, but, until someone truly fixes the make-up and attitude of this team, no change will be permanent. A lot of the deficiencies that certain players on the team have – Phanuef, Kessel, Gardiner – are deficiencies the three general managers that traded those players saw, and knew about. Talented, no doubt, but not enough to carry a middle-of-the-pack team, albeit a playoff team. The Boston collapse, which I refuse to ever acknowledge exists in conversations with friends and strangers alike, can be attributed to inexperience. But since then, nothing has changed. This group, or at least the core pieces, are not good enough to win. A weird lovechild formed with sperm from Scotty Bowman, Toe Blake and Vince Lombardi himself may be able to guide a team with said talent to a championship, but not Randy Carlyle, who earned his coaching fame guiding a team with the luxury of having three superstars. He was doomed from the beginning.
The worst part about it all is that the Leafs have basically wasted half of a season with Carlyle, despite hiring two assistant coaches with NHL head coaching experience in the off-season. They extended him, remember? Brendan Shanahan basically cleaned house when he came to the organization, but spared Carlyle and Nonis, the two pieces who have the biggest influence on the roster and how the team plays. He has no reason to be surprised that what now seems like decades of mediocrity has added another year. And really, neither do we, the crazy bastards who subject ourselves to the circus and allow our happiness to be affected by the outcome of the team’s games, and decisions.
I’m not sure who the Leafs will eventually hire as their new head coach. It may not matter.
Ridin' The Pine 