It’s human nature to feel a little bit defeated and frustrated when you don’t live up to your goals. And for a team like the Toronto Maple Leafs that has consistently been a contending team where advancing in the playoffs was a given, seeing where they have ended in recent days is certainly disappointing. David Alter struggles to hide his disappointment.
The Maple Leafs are professional athletes and the word professional needs to be emphasized here. It’s one thing to know what your fate is, but you are expected to go out there every night and play to the best of your ability. You’re also supposed to care about your teammates and step up for them.
Lack of Fight is a Concern
So it was pretty disappointing for Toronto fans to see their captain get kneed by Anaheim Ducks captain Radko Gudas and see absolutely no retribution in the immediate aftermath of seeing Auston Matthews flat on the ice and needing help getting up and going to the locker room. There is no doubt that Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube tore a strip into his players for the lack of immediate response.
There’s also a sense of embarrassment from the players acknowledging it, with Maple Leafs defenseman Morgan Rielly saying, “It’s on me,” when asked about his initial reaction to the hit while he was on the ice. William Nylander shared the same sentiments. From what we understand, the only player who kind of reacted in that moment was defenseman Jake McCabe, who could be heard screaming at Gudas from the bench.
As Wayne Gretzky once famously noted, “You don’t need a designated fighter, but you need five guys on the ice who are willing to look after one another.” The problem is that a player like McCabe cannot respond in the moment. Players on the bench receive an automatic 10-game suspension if they leave the bench to engage in an altercation. Just ask former Leaf David Clarkson, who received this suspension after coming to the aid of Phil Kessel in his very first season as a Leaf in the preseason of the 2013-14 campaign.
In the third period of their game against the Ducks, Toronto players finally got involved and sought retribution. Although the Leafs finally won a game to snap what was their eight-game losing streak, the mood was anything but celebratory. There was a sense of “why” from reporters—why was this allowed to happen?
Buffalo Similarities
In their very next game against the Buffalo Sabres, players from Buffalo recounted when they went through a similar situation when Tage Thompson was elbowed by New Jersey Devils forward Stefan Noesen. None of the players on the ice jumped to Thompson’s defense. The Sabres revealed that they learned a lot about themselves following the incident. It all came down to building team chemistry, with Sabres defenseman Rasmus Dahlin saying that drinking beers is one way to do that. There’s also something to be said about the fact that you don’t need to be best friends with someone in order to be a good teammate.
Now that being said, the suspension discipline itself was considered pretty mild for someone with a rap sheet like Gudas, who has been suspended five times before. Matthews’ agent, Judd Moldaver, tore a strip into the NHL Department of Player Safety, calling for a more significant suspension. Connor McDavid, who has the same agent as Matthews, also said if there is this much angst about these decisions afterwards, the process should probably be reviewed.
The problem was the Department backed themselves into a corner. Instead of saying it would be an in-person hearing for Gudas, they made it the general phone hearing that carries a maximum suspension of five games under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement. So that was the maximum they could give. That’s definitely where they erred and it’ll be interesting to see what is done about that in the future. Not that this will help Toronto much right now.