Blame game, Scott Laughton skating, and Marlie matters: Leaflets

The Maple Leafs are now eight games into the season and with the help of some rounding that means the team is now one-tenth of the way through the season. The season is still young but also isn’t nothing and whether you feel the Leafs will be fine or not is somewhat irrelevant. What matters is that this doesn’t look like a club that is attempting to prove that they can do even better without Mitch Marner. Matias Maccelli, Nicolas Roy, and Dakota Joshua haven’t taken steps back from their 2024-25 downturns, and Anthony Stolarz’ save percentage points to a club that is witnessing their PDO bubble burst. You can certainly point to the fact that the Leafs started 4-4-1 last season and went on to perfectly fine regular season. You can also point out that goal is to improve your team and so far there aren’t any signs of that outside of Rielly’s offensive game returning.

Outright panicking about the Maple Leafs might not be warranted, you don’t need to start the rebuild just yet, but not feeling good about the club and having a laundry list of concerns seems justifiable. Here a few Leafs thoughts to distract you from the baseball related butterflies in your stomach:

Callouts are an ugly look

Craig Berube calling out William Nylander was a bizarre choice. Nylander has been the most consistent offensive threat for the Maple Leafs so far this year and given that he’s never been of particularly high value in his own end, I don’t know why the assumption was that was resolved in training camp. The same holds true of Nylander looking like he’s on a different planet some nights. It’s often one game and then he’s right back to doing what he does. I didn’t think much of the callout because it was the coach calling out the player best equipped mentally for a public callout from the coach and it sent the message that guy who is doing the most on the scoresheet isn’t even living up to expectations so everyone needs to be better. That’s coaching and whether you agree with it or not, it at least looked like a calculated move.

Stolarz’ callout of the Leafs is somewhat understandable given that goaltenders tend to be pissed off when they are run over. Whether or not the Leafs are in a position to turn down powerplays is debatable, but given how their powerplay has gone this season, it was probably better to stand up for your goaltender.

Where the callouts get interesting (READ: turn ugly) is with Berube’s exhaustion of trying to get the top line going. This one has layers and doesn’t really have an easy answer.

The Leafs have gone from having Mitch Marner on that line to test runs of Easton Cowan, Matias Maccelli, Max Domi, and some double shifting of William Nylander. While Craig Berube might be attempting to call out his players, the reality is that Brad Treliving failed him over the summer and Berube either hasn’t found the right fit or committed to a player that best exemplifies what he wants to get out of that line. Berube’s criticism seem intended to spark Auston Matthews to give him more, and anyone longing for