Maple Leafs' sorry season leaves Toronto in tatters
It was Jan. 7, 2015, and it was Peter Horachek's first day of his new job as the interim head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs. He drew up some drills, talked to the team and then took the ice for practice.
Horachek promptly fell flat on his behind.
If any one visual encapsulated the Leafs season, it was that moment: a coach, ready for a new start and a clean slate, and the next thing he knows, he's sitting on the cold, hard ice.
Horachek picked himself up and got back to business. The Leafs haven't done the same. If this season were a movie script, the screenplay wouldn't sell because the drama is too unbelievable. The franchise is in shambles, as the Leafs went from a team in playoff contention in January to a one now in serious pursuit of winning the draft lottery.
Toronto's problems were not wholly unexpected; struggling is one of the things the Leafs do best. Toronto has not won a Stanley Cup since 1967 and has made the playoffs just once in the last 10 years.
It was what happened off the ice, in the media, and within the fanbase that proved far worse than any of the numbers on a scoreboard. All of that had its beginnings long before this season started.
"Imagine a really disappointing cult," said Cathal Kelly, a columnist for The Globe and Mail. "It's kind of a cult where they promise you a lot of things, and Toronto is obsessed with something that for years now just continues to let them down. I think that's a big part of the identity of the Maple Leafs."
Over the summer, the Leafs didn't change much in terms of the personnel on the ice. Instead, they made moves off of it, bringing in Brendan Shanahan as team president and Kyle Dubas as a hockey analytics expert while firing all of the team's assistant coaches.
By not changing the roster and only altering the front office, management had a chance to see what was truly the problem in Toronto: the people in the suits or the people in the jerseys. It didn't take long to figure out that the current version of the Leafs roster could never win.
Things were pretty grim for interim head coach Peter Horachek and the Toronto Maple Leafs.
"What this season did is that it removed any illusions that the Toronto Maple Leafs had hope with this roster," said Bruce Arthur, a columnist for the Toronto Star. "Because you could always say we were in playoff position last season until Jonathan Bernier got hurt. There was always enough of a stretch of good times so you could say that's really us. That's over now. Now there are no more illusions. It's a big rebuild, but they've finally arrived at a place where it's an inarguable rebuild."
The Leafs started to shatter illusions early in the season, when the team's leadership rebelled against its own fans. After years of frustration, fans were upset with the way the team was playing and were especially aggravated when the Leafs suffered two horrific losses — one a 9-2 beating at the hands of the Nashville Predators and the other a 6-2 loss to Buffalo, the NHL's bottom dweller.
Fans tossed jerseys onto the ice and sarcastically cheered for the home team at the Air Canada Centre. Jersey-tossing had already proved to be a problem during the season. Leafs star Phil Kessel called fans out in the media for the "classless" behavior.
So following a 5-2 win over the Lightning on Nov. 20, the Leafs decided not to offer the customary stick salute to fans following the game. The decision spoke volumes about the character of the team.
"The whole act of saluting the fans after the game is not really that big of a deal," said Jeff O'Neill, a TSN analyst who played for the Leafs from 2005-07. "But when the fans are suffering through a tough season, the idea of making the ridiculous decision to not salute them is crazy.
Toronto Maple Leafs fans sparked ire by the team by throwing their jerseys on the ice.
"When you pay $250 to go watch a game and [players] decide 'We're not saluting you because we're mad at the three guys that had too much to drink that threw the jerseys on the ice,' that's crazy."
The ramifications were immediate. The Toronto media blew up over the snub, and the coaching staff made it clear that it was in no way involved in the decision not to salute fans, shifting all responsibility to the players. An already angry fanbase grew only more agitated. And the entire affair possibly created more tension in an already tense locker room.
"Salute-gate, that's so unique to hockey to do something like that, where traditions really matter, where small gestures really matter," Kelly said. "That was the point which shattered that dressing room because I'm positive that there were guys sitting there who thought it was a terrible idea. They didn't feel empowered to speak up, to say no. This wouldn't happen in the Rangers dressing room, the Canadiens dressing room. Those teams just wouldn't do that. I think that's when [the Leafs] all realized and it began to fall apart."
The season did not fall apart immediately. Instead, the Leafs went on a 9-1-1 run. Coach Randy Carlyle wasn't convinced the good times would last. Although the Leafs were winning, they were getting badly out-shot and out-possessed in nearly every game.
"Now I feel that we are slipping the last couple of games," Carlyle said in a press conference after a 6-2 win over the Ducks on Dec. 16. "We have to get back to that more energetic, more stop-and-go, more straight-line hockey. We do have some players that have continued to do it but we believe as a whole that our game has slipped."
The slide started following the win over the Ducks. The Leafs went 2-5 through the rest of December, and they did not seem to listen to anything their coach said. After the team opened 2015 with two more losses, a frustrated Carlyle lashed out, telling the media he didn't always have the luxury of saying what he wanted to say to certain players because of a meddling organization.
Management stepped in and fired Carlyle on Jan. 6. The Leafs were 21-16-3 and sitting in fourth place in the Atlantic Division, one point ahead of the Bruins for the second wild-card spot.
The Toronto media had a field day with the move, long anticipated by fans. Rumors claimed Carlyle played favorites and didn't have a good relationship with the players because he was too tough on them. The move also reinforced the idea that the Leafs' core group, led by Kessel, was "uncoachable."
One reporter asked Kessel in the aftermath of the Carlyle firing if Kessel thought of himself as uncoachable. Kessel didn't take kindly to that. The entire exchange was caught on video, as the forward laughed in the reporter's face, then said, "This guy is such an idiot. He's always been like that."
Few players would tell a media member they thought they were uncoachable. But Kessel's irritated response revealed a major character flaw shared by the core of the team: He can't handle the level of media attention and scrutiny in Toronto.
"The pressure is enormous, especially around that team, and when you get guys who are really brittle and sensitive, that team doesn't have any big personalities who can absorb the pressure," Kelly said. "Most other teams have a couple of guys who are funny or smart or articulate, tough, they can sort of fend for the whole team. They can fend off all that pressure. Toronto doesn't have any of that. None of those guys like talking to the media. Things blow up and things escalate."
The losses and chaos took a toll on the Toronto faithful.
And escalate they did. Toronto won one game in January as the team started to transition from playoff hopeful to trade-deadline seller. Trade rumors circulated about nearly every member of the team, but most of the focus fell on Kessel and captain Dion Phaneuf.
Meanwhile, Horachek, who had been heralded as a calmer and more patient coach than Carlyle, quickly grew frustrated. By Feb. 10, just over a month after Horachek took over, he called the Leafs out follwoing a 5-4 loss to the Rangers by saying their "give-a-s**t meter has to be higher."
By the March 2 trade deadline, the media and fan criticism in Toronto reached a fever pitch. Everyone's job was in peril, and it seemed every player was at fault for how badly things were going. So when a tweet aired during the TSN trade deadline broadcast falsely accusing Joffrey Lupul of inappropriate behavior with Dion Phaneuf's wife, the players completely lost it.
Lupul was irate on social media, tweeting "TSN just a poor mans TMZ. Embarrassing." The next day, he tweeted "Get familiar with #nocomment." On Instagram, he challenged a fan in the comments of a photo to a fistfight.
Behind the scenes, Lupul and Phaneuf teamed up to demand an apology from TSN while threatening legal action against the media. It was one of the most bizarre turns in an already dramatic season. Later that week, Phil Kessel came to the defense of Phaneuf, who had been called out in the media for not playing well enough. Kessel called the media's treatment of Phaneuf "disgusting."
"When you lose like this, things are going to happen," Arthur said. "You're going to wind up with friction and that's what you've gotten. You've gotten friction. You can argue that the situation is intolerable, but certain leaders on this team failed to deal with it very well."
Get familiar with #nocomment
— Joffrey Lupul (@JLupul) March 3, 2015
The problems didn't end with the Lupul-Phaneuf fiasco. Less than a week later, Toronto was dismantled in a 6-1 loss to the Blues. The club was lifeless, and the Leafs called for a team meeting the next morning. Nazem Kadri, the much-maligned young center, who was expected to grow into top-line material but never reached that billing, showed up late and was promptly sent home.
Horachek told the media that Kadri would be able to play in the next game "only if I want him." Apparently, neither Horachek nor the team's management wanted Kadri. The team suspended him for the next three games, and Shanahan, who had mostly been quiet on the team's drama throughout the season, finally spoke up. He made sure the media knew that this wasn't Kadri's first offense and that the team wanted the 24-year-old to take a good look at himself and figure out who he wanted to be as a player.
It was an interesting time for Shanahan to speak out. Why wait until something happened with Kadri? Why didn't he speak out about Kessel or Lupul or Phaneuf?
To former Leaf O'Neill, Shanahan's message to Kadri should be taken as a positive.
"In my opinion, [Shanahan] did that because he believes in the player and he's trying to get his attention," O'Neill said. "He wants him to get better. He believes in his ability. I'm not sure if public shaming was a way to get his attention, but he really believes in him and if he didn't care about him, he wouldn't have done it."
In essence, this season was an evaluation period for the Leafs ahead of what might be the most important rebuild in team history. Toronto has gotten a clear look at who can handle the pressure of the Toronto market — the third largest in North America — and it also proved both to the fans and to the ownership group that a total rebuild of the club is necessary.
"This season was an 82-game mulligan," Kelly said. "What they wanted to do this season was have Shanahan prove to the board of Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment that it was time to destroy this team.
"They just showed the board over the eight months of the season, this is how bad it is and it's never getting any better. It will never be better than mediocre. If the goal here is to win a Stanley Cup, then you have to completely destroy this team and rebuild it."
