Toilet Bowl II
November 19th, 2009 | by jays1992 |By Paul Bruno
The Leafs travel to Raleigh, North Carolina, for the second time this season and are again playing for the title of 29th best team in the league against the equally inept Hurricanes.
Toronto won that contest by a 3-2 score to move ahead in this “turtle race”. The Leafs are hoping that the Monster, Jonas Gustavsson, can reprise his strong performance in that game. At least the Leaf goalies are healthy. Carolina is without starter Cam Ward (leg) and second stringer, Michael Leighton, strained a groin the other night against Montreal. If he can’t go tonight, it will be retread Manny Legace in between the pipes.
Phil Kessel really seems to have found his scoring eye, with five goals and three assists in his first seven games, but the rest of the team is not even close to getting caught up in his wake. In fact, it almost looks like his teammates have sacrificed their own good scoring opportunities to give him the puck.
Oddly, the normally cooperative head coach Ron Wilson ducked the media attention yesterday and left the players to respond for their dreadful start. He has tried a number of tactics, from calling out, and sometimes sitting out, his veterans, playing games to relieve the tension with some fun practices, and continually mixed line combinations. He’s just not getting anything out of this club.
The players, to a man, are completely befuddled by their current predicament and at a loss to explain how things have gone this bad so quickly. One wonders how long their fiercely loyal fan base will continue to stomach this awful performance. There is a sense that it has eroded somewhat in light of the team’s pessimistic outlook.
Bryan Burke resurfaced to repeat that he would like to make a deal to shake things up. With the salary cap landscape in the NHL, that’s not as easy as it sounds. He also spoke of dropping a front-line player (Jason Blake’s name keeps popping up here) into the AHL, to be replaced by a minor league prospect or two, in an attempt to change the dynamic around this team.
This team is left grasping at straws right now. A significant change in the atmosphere around the Leafs will only be possible with an elusive win to relieve the mounting pressure.
Maybe they get it tonight. It certainly looks like their best opportunity on the horizon.
