VANCOUVER (Oct. 25) – It seems like every few days, the city of Toronto establishes a new low point in its professional sports legacy, and our town wasn’t to be outdone this weekend. While the Maple Leafs were officially recording the worst eight-game start in franchise history by losing, 3-1, to the Vancouver Canucks, Toronto F.C. of Major League Soccer took the incompetence to an entirely new level. Holding our city’s only chance – among five major pro teams – for a playoff spot in the calendar year 2009, F.C. thoroughly choked against the worst club in MLS and was destroyed, 5-0, by the New York Red Bulls at Giants Stadium. That’s the rough equivalent of a hockey team losing a make-or-break game, 13-0. Sadly for the tortured fans of Toronto, the Leafs aren’t likely to participate in a match of any such relevance this season.
Though they out-worked and out-skated the Canucks for the entire third period Saturday night, the Leafs’ deplorable offense wasn’t good enough to produce a timely goal against Roberto Luongo. As such, this is unequivocally the most inept Leafs’ team to start a season. The stumble-bums of 1990-91 were at least able to scratch out a victory for beleaguered (and soon-to-be fired) coach Doug Carpenter in their eighth game – a 6-2 rout of Chicago at Maple Leaf Gardens on Oct. 20th, 1990 that “improved” Toronto’s record to 1-6-1. At 0-7-1, the current Leafs stand alone with one of the most dubious marks in team annals. Next up, is the worst 10-game start in club history, which belongs to the 1985-86 aggregation with a 1-9-0 record. That team, however, earned its first victory in its third game, at Chicago Stadium.
So, we’re talking an entirely new animal with the Maple Leafs of 2009-10.
A club that was projected, by management, to challenge for a playoff spot will have to wait until at least the 26th night of the season to record its first victory – assuming Leafs can get off the schneid in Anaheim on Monday. Unfortunately for the Blue & White, it’s incumbent for winning teams to pop in the odd goal. The Leafs have counted only 15 tallies in their first eight games and it doesn’t appear as if a scoring splurge is on the horizon. Though they hustled like hell in the final 20 minutes here in Vancouver, the Buds couldn’t buy a lucky bounce. Lee Stempniak twice personified the club’s inadequacy. In the first period – with the Leafs playing shorthanded – he completely fanned on a shot while cruising in on a 2-on-1 break with Matt Stajan. In the middle frame, he one-timed a centering pass 10 feet wide of the Canucks’ net.
Goaltending wasn’t quite the issue as in previous games, at least not at the Toronto end of the rink. Joey MacDonald was twice beaten on Vancouver power-plays in the opening period but he later came up with the sort of difficult, timely stop that has eluded the Leafs this season – an eye-popping glove stab off Michael Grabner at 8:56 of the second frame with the Canucks still holding their 2-0 edge. Any semblance of an attack might have allowed the Maple Leafs to capitalize on the outstanding save, but there was no response whatsoever. At the opposite end, Luongo was again flaunting what the Leafs have lacked for almost half-a-decade — strong, reliable goaltending at the critical juncture of a game. “Lui”, as he is known out here, stoned the Toronto shooters four or five times in the early going, precisely as New York’s Henrik Lundqvist had done a week earlier at the Air Canada Centre.
All of this, quite naturally, is compunding the stress level on the hockey club. General Manager Brian Burke stomped through the event-level corridor at G.M. Place after the game with the look of a serial killer. In his wildest imagination, Burke wouldn’t have expected his team to be in such dire straits after less than four weeks of the schedule. But, the standings do not lie. The Leafs already find themselves 10 full points out of playoff territory in the Eastern Conference. As of today, the club would have to leap-frog Florida, the Islanders, Carolina, Tampa Bay, Atlanta, Montreal and Boston in order to end its four-season absence from the Stanley Cup tournament. And, it’s unlikely those seven teams will stand still for the Blue & White in the ensuing months. Each loss heightens the Maple Leafs’ quest to finally break the franchise-record drought. Ron Wilson’s crew must now perform at a pace of 18 games over .500 the rest of the way in order to match Montreal’s eighth-place total of 93-points from last season.
What this also means, of course, is when the Leafs finally do win a game, Toronto police will have to close Yonge Street from Eglinton to the lake-front. The Leafs could be 1-16-3 at the time, but car-horns will be blaring all over town. That’s how pathetically the standard has declined in the hockey centre of the universe.
E-mail
[email protected] 
Toronto Maple Leafs Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»