For a sport that actually likes to tout how powerful its gamers are, hockey gamers don’t appear to have a lot tolerance for something that makes them really feel dangerous within the slightest. At the least on the ice. Morgan Rielly of Toronto was simply the newest to moist himself when an opponent reminded him just a bit an excessive amount of that the Leafs had misplaced a sport:
Do you know that Ridly Greig was breaking some unwritten rule which you can’t fireplace a slapshot into an empty internet on the finish of the sport? After all you didn’t, as a result of it could be a ridiculously silly rule to observe. Nobody cares when you clinch an NBA sport with a breakaway dunk. If a participant could make {that a} 360 or reverse jam or one thing cool, a lot the higher. Baseball gamers like to fill their pants about dumb stuff, and but nobody appears to thoughts when a place participant pitching sees certainly one of his choices cracked to Jupiter.
However no, that wouldn’t do for the Leafs and Rielly, who went Dale Hunter on Greig for his obvious crossing of a line that was solely within the Leafs’ or Rielly’s head. And when you’re questioning what sort of institutional management may be happening inside that Leafs room, right here’s the ol’ hand-steady-on-the-tiller Sheldon Keefe on what he considered his solely good d-man taking himself out of motion for the following couple weeks, probably, over a nothing:
Given two days to replicate on his feedback with the belief that Rielly is having an in-person listening to and is extra sure to overlook six video games or extra, Keefe as soon as once more had his mind fluid drip down out of his mouth:
Dig up, silly.
The Leafs have misplaced contact with each the Panthers and Bruins within the Northeast, and now will spend the final 30 video games of the season scratching and clawing with Detroit for the ultimate automated spot, in addition to the Wings, Islanders, and anybody who else will get scorching for even a wild-card spot. Which probably signifies that nevertheless many playoff sequence the Leafs play, they received’t have dwelling ice for any of them. Not that that has ever saved them lately anyway.
Keefe most likely ought to concern himself with the truth that his crew that’s loaded with velocity and scoring expertise is a middling rush crew, or that his backside six is rubbish, or that his slow-ass protection is much too passive, which prevents the crew from getting out within the open ice as a lot because it ought to. Or that their goalies are both harm, dangerous, or each.
However no, that is what the Leafs are regarding themselves with. There’s an apparent reply right here, which is that if a crew doesn’t need an opponent placing some taste on a game-clinching empty-net aim, the correct technique is to not discover oneself in a scenario the place the goalie needs to be pulled towards by far the division’s worst crew. Don’t wish to see the crew on the opposite bench rejoice a win? Nice, beat them. In any other case take the loss and shut up. However in Toronto, nobody ever accepts something and so they actually by no means shut up about it. Go, Leafs, Go.