At the Maple Leafs' end of season media availability, team captain Auston Matthews didn't give a direct answer to a question about his desire to remain with the club.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Moving down the scale of delusion, there are crypto types, stock pickers, day traders and, at the bottom, Toronto Maple Leafs fans who’ve just heard something they don’t want to hear.
On Thursday, Auston Matthews told the Leafs he wants to leave Toronto. He didn’t say those words, but that’s what he said. Anyone who’s been through a breakup knows that when you ask your significant other for reassurances and get back formulations like “I don’t know” and “I can’t predict the future,” it’s time to start looking for a new apartment.
But not Toronto. Toronto’s spent the weekend convincing itself that this is Matthews’s way of scaring management straight. Forget about retools. The Leafs are going to Mad Max their way through 2026-27. Just look at them on the bench. They’re not half-asleep or about to cry. They’re girding themselves.
In this telling, Matthews is the only guy at MLSE who refuses to accept ChatGPT playing on his wing, rather than the dad who’s taking a suitcase along as he nips down to the corner store to grab some smokes.
We’ve seen this show before. Mitch Marner spent more than a year hemming and hawing his way out of town. Every time he was asked if he was staying, Marner’s answer was some version of, ‘Look over there. Is that a bird?’
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In that case, as in this one, not answering is the answer. Toronto couldn’t accept it then and can’t accept it now. This city will debase itself in any way, accept any insult, as long as it keeps the relationship alive.
Question to Matthews: “For yourself personally, is this a place you want to be, or would reject any suggestion that you should not be here for the remainder of your contract?
Matthews’s (total non-sequitur of an) answer: “Yeah, I think all that stuff, I mean, there’s always noise and there’s always chatter. I think personally that I really don’t pay attention to all that. I just focus on myself and focus on this team and try to be part of the solution.”
The guy.
Does not.
Want to be here.
The Leafs went through a season of Mitch Marner giving non-answers on his intention to remain with the franchise. The organization may not be willing do the same with Matthews, Cathal Kelly writes.Adam Hunger/The Associated Press
The question is what the Leafs are going to do about it. A serious organization wouldn’t immediately run Matthews out of town on a rail. That’s how you get robbed in a trade. But a major-league outfit would be going 24 hours a day laying down the track.
I don’t care if the next GM is Phil Jackson or Knute Rockne or, God help him, Mats Sundin, that person’s first job is establishing a minimum standard of the what the Toronto Maple Leafs will accept. Principle one – if you don’t want to play for this team, then you won’t.
Since Matthews controls any move through his full no-trade protection, now is the time to begin breaking him down. Auston, where do you really want to go? Blue sky it for us. Okay, what’s your second pick? All right, how about you give us a full list?
Great, how about this or that other team? If we’re already talking about you going, would you be willing to do that?
You get your hand on his neck and apply steadily increasing pressure, until he realizes there is no turning back. Then you steer him toward the deal that works best for the club.
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If he won’t agree to go where you want him to, you tell him you’re going to wring every minute of the two years left on his deal out of him, and that it’s going to be even less fun than that sounds.
He’s not getting traded at the deadline, no matter if this bunch of yahoos is 33rd in the NHL at the time. You’re keeping Craig Berube as head coach, but you’ve told him to stop being so nice to everyone. Also, you’re getting him a bullhorn for his birthday.
For a 28-year-old who’s already starting to slip, two years in that situation might as well be 20. Matthews will fold.
Do the Leafs have the steel to do this? Are you kidding? Of course not. Some businesses are a rock in the river. They have their standards and they stick to them. The Leafs are a paper boat in a flood tide. They go wherever their employees at the time feel like going.
William Nylander (left) said he wouldn't be interested in a total teardown of the Leafs' roster. Matthews took a wait-and-see approach when asked about it last week.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
William Nylander gives fans the finger? Ha ha, he’s just joking. What a card.
Nylander is another one volunteering part-time as the Leafs’ GM. When The Athletic asked him a couple of weeks ago if he intended to stay, he gave one of those, ‘Sure, maybe’ answers.
“Unless it was a full rebuild and we were going to get rid of everybody, then it’s a different story,” Nylander said.
Do these guys understand what a contract is? If you want to decide year-to-year whether or not this is the team you prefer to be playing on, then sign year-to-year contracts.
If you would prefer the security of an eight-year deal – which is what Nylander is bound by – you’re giving up your vote. You’re here through a rebuild or a resale or the reimagination of the franchise into a Walmart.
That all of these non-decision makers believe so strongly they have decision-making power tells you everything about how dysfunctional the Leafs have become. Nylander would be another one I’d be escorting out the closest open door, or window. Will that make the hockey team better? I don’t know – could it be any worse?
A rational organization should have realized over the last couple of months that the Leafs’ problems aren’t hockey problems. They’re relationship problems. Ten years in, these people are all taking past each other. No amount of grovelling or selective deafness is going to fix this. It’s time for everyone to move on.
The longer the Leafs take to accept that, the uglier and more drawn out the inevitable breakup will be. Which means it’s guaranteed to be as ugly, as drawn out and, in the end, as profitless as it can be.