"You think it's my fault?!"

HOCKEY POST UPCOMING, sorry, non-hockey fans, but you had to expect this...

The Toronto Maple Leafs have relieved coach Randy Carlyle of his duties. Not a moment too soon, and a season and a half too late, says this Leafs fan.
Carlyle is not a good coach. Yes, he did win a Stanley Cup, albeit with a stacked roster that a trained monkey could have coached to that outcome. That notwithstanding, here is a good breakdown of why he was fired. The tl;dr: is that he is a piss-poor possession coach. He was in Anaheim, he is in Toronto, and he will be should any NHL team be foolish enough to hire him in the future.

Like Ron Wilson before him, Carlyle is an old-school coach who was unwilling to change his ways. "His ways" involved running three lines of players in a four-line league, with a corresponding over-reliance on his top line of Bozak flanked by Kessel and van Reimsdyk. He consistently put players in positions to fail, then blamed the players when they failed. He made inexplicable lineup decisions such as putting David Clarkson on the powerplay unit and, for far too long, pairing the two defencemen with the least defensive acumen (and to be brutally frank, none of the Leafs D-man has much defensive acumen).

Many people, including me, thought that when Brendan Shanahan assumed the reins as chief honcho of the Maple Leafs, GM Nonis and coach Carlyle would be given walking papers. Usually that's what happens: an incoming big kahuna gets to handpick his subordinates. Instead Carlyle's assistants were fired while he was kept on...his contract was actually extended.

It took me a while to grasp what Shanahan was up to. He said he was going to spend an indefinite period of time evaluating the team from top to bottom before acting rashly. Translation: he removed Carlyle's crutches and handed him some rope, with which Randy proceeded to hang himself; now he's removed the players' crutch in Carlyle and will pay out half a season's rope to see who among his players hangs himself too.

My suspicion: many will.  Because, as my favourite Leafs columnist has written, the Leafs' core is fatally flawed. NONE of them have committed to playing hockey the way it's supposed to be played. Pond hockey is so much more fun...and there's enough raw skill to ensure the illusion of progress, such as when the Leafs went 10-1-1 a month and a distant dream ago. Carlyle was unable to get his core to play defence, so he had to go; his core now must accept playing defence, or they'll be gone too.

There were some good moves made this past off-season: positive possession players Winnik and Santorelli were brought in on very friendly contracts. Both players'  advanced stats have turned negative, despite solid contributions from each. Meanwhile, Leafs cast-offs like Grabovski and Kulemin have positive possession numbers on their new teams, and that's another nail in Carlyle's coaching coffin.

But.

Carlyle was definitely a problem. He was far from the only one plaguing this lineup.

Let's talk about Phil Kessel.

Phil Kessel is a supremely gifted hockey player who was brought to the Leafs to score goals. He has outperformed absolutely every expectation anyone could ever have had of him because (a) he has led the team in scoring every year and (b) he's responsible for even more goals for the opposition.

Phil has a lethal snap shot he can unleash without effort. He is also a very underrated passer and he has very good speed. What he doesn't have, however, is drive and desire to play a team game. He hangs around in the neutral zone waiting for Hail Mary passes from the D that look pretty when they work, but are more often than not picked off. There is no willingness to backcheck, let alone go into the corner and hit someone to retrieve a puck. This, you get the feeling, is beneath Mr. Kessel, a job properly left to the less talented.

Real stars don't act like that.

This flaw of Phil's has been pointed out several times in the media, and, you'd have to think, even more often behind closed doors. The new assistant coaches asked Kessel to make an adjustment to his game and he refused. In all honesty, he should have been traded the next day.

The Toronto media is finally starting to ask the tough questions they should have been asking all along.  Asked if he was difficult to coach--an epithet former coach Wilson had affixed to Kessel--Phil responded this way.

Not the response of a leader. The way to answer a pointed question like that is to acknowledge it and say that you're always trying to improve your game. That yes, you're aware of the allegations and you are doing all you can to change them. You could even bristle a little, and *then* acknowledge the question. Answer pretty much anything that doesn't involve calling your questioner an idiot. People generally ask questions like that because they believe the answer is "yes".

Is it Phil's fault? He definitely shares the blame, at the very least. The blame, in the case of the Toronto Maple Leafs, lies in an awful lot of places. Phaneuf has not played like a leader most nights. So blame him, and blame the man (Dave Nonis) who signed him to that ridiculous contract. Blame Nonis, and exclusively Nonis, for the asinine contract handed to David Clarkson. (That was such a huge overpayment that I can't bring myself to blame Clarkson at all; he must have felt like he won a lottery.) Blame Gardiner for lackadaisical defensive play just like Phaneuf's. Franson, too, although he at least makes up for it at the other end with that seeing-eye shot of his.
There are very few blameless individuals on this team. The aforementioned Winnik and Santorelli are two; both have played well beyond expectations. So has Richard Panik, in a bit role. And Komarov, well, I can't fault him because he'll come crush me.

Those are all role players, although Santorelli is playing way above his pay grade right now. Among the core, only Kadri is not rotten. That kind of hurts to say, because I've disliked Kadri since he first arrived: he had this unearned swagger I just wanted to slap off him. Give him credit for becoming a more complete player this year--the only core Leaf skater who has.

The goalies have been...not bad. Not great--both of them have let in some real softies--but given the number of friggin SHOTS they face...  let's just say that given an actual defensive system employed by an actual NHL-level coach, they might be considerably better.

The Leafs are an unending soap opera. I think that this point that's most of why us fans stay fans. It's hard to believe the team ISN'T cursed.

As the world turns...