The Toronto Maple Leafs have gone through two major leadership changes in the wake of their latest playoff disappointment earlier in the spring. First, they made the decision to fire head coach Sheldon Keefe and replace him with 2019 Stanley Cup-winning bench boss Craig Berube, who was most recently with the St. Louis Blues.
And this week, they announced that Auston Matthews would be taking over as the 26th captain in franchise history from John Tavares. That came on the heels of a handful of roster moves by GM Brad Treliving, who has (so far) elected to keep the "Core 4" in place.
But in the mind of NHL columnist Dave Feschuk, the Leafs didn't undergo the kind of changes necessary to finally exercise their playoff demons once and for all. While appearing on TSN, Feschuk took Treliving to task for failing to deliver on his "everything is on the table" option.
"But this is not the real change—the 'everything is on the table' kind of change. And they use that 'everything is on the table' phrase in the postmortem when it was Pelly and Shanahan and Treliving standing on the dais talking about another failed season," he said.
"The whole team that was there is essentially coming back. So you're right; the idea that anything substantial will change in the result without anything substantial changing in the makeup of the roster is delusional and we've got eight years of evidence that tells us that," Feschuk added.
Gone from last season's Leafs roster are the likes of Tyler Bertuzzi, Ilya Samsonov, Ilya Lyubushkin, and T.J. Brodie, while Chris Tanev, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, and Anthony Stolarz have arrived in town.
But will it be enough to get them over the hump? Apparently not, at least in Feschuk's mind.
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