The Toronto Maple Leafs: A Pre-Mortem

Leafs start the season tomorrow and as much as I want to be optimistic about these guys, it's hard to do. Safety Razor and Toskles failed completely to instill any reason for confidence in Toronto's goaltending situation. Yeah, the pre-season doesn't matter. But does Toskala really think having the Leafs full roster in front of him is going to really make that much of a difference? Has he seen Toronto's starting roster? Matty Stajan is our number two centre.

Injuries to Wellwood and Colaiacovo hurt hard. This was supposed to Wellwood's Year. Same for Carlo. Why doesn't Belak ever get injured.

I like the the prospective fourth line of Devereaux-Newbury-Battaglia. That's a scrappy line. Blake-Sundin-Anybody is shaping up like it might be worth the hype it gets. After that I don't know. Antropov will have a big year. He has to. The Woz will final get the chance he deserves but I don't think there's room back there for Anton Stralman. Maybe once they trade McCabe...

Opening two straight against Ottawa doesn't help anyone, but otherwise October looks pretty winnable for the Leafs. Nine games at home to just four on the road and games against potential punching bags like Long Island, Washington and Florida. That would be cautious optimism I'm trying to express.

Game one starts 7:30 tomorrow, but I'm in class till eight. I forgot to schedule my classes around the Leafs schedule, again. Does this make me somehow less of a fan?

Yeah, probably.

Jason

Endnotes: Wikipedia has a list of properly sourced hockey nicknames and www.kevinweekes.com is totally not something I just made up. I'm done.