It's only a bunker mentality if everyone is allowed into the bunker.
What the Leafs are in the midst of right now would more correctly be called human sacrifice.
When things go wrong (i.e. always), someone gets pushed out of the bomb shelter to say something about it. Even if it's hallucenogenically optimistic or an obvious lie, people want to hear the excuse. It makes them feel less alone in the world.
Most nights, it's head coach Randy Carlyle. And what the hell is he supposed to say? Everyone knows he's as good as fired. Carlyle isn't coaching this season. He's professionally bleeding out. They ought to carry him to the bench every night on a stretcher.
Nonetheless, Carlyle must speak. Every time he does so, he seems a little more despondent. By February, he'll be doing the postgame in his bathrobe, smoking a cigarette.
Maybe "general manager" Dave Nonis should offer up some encouragement? It'd be a great idea, if anybody believed he had any say in what happens.
Imagine the Leafs are a bank. The bank defaults. They call an emergency meeting with the press. Flashes popping. People yelling. Then someone says, "… and to explain this unprecedented crisis, I'm going to have Ed from Accounting come up here and say a few words. Ed?"
Dave Nonis is Ed from Accounting. He isn't a GM any more. He's an Oswaldian patsy. He's there to take the blame.
I've always believed Phil Kessel could make sense of this mess, if only the brutes in the media would give him a chance to organize his thoughts into an epic poem: 'The Ballad of Phil, A Lament in Monosyllables (feat. Tyler Bozak on lute).'
What's Kessel supposed to say? "I am good …" – waves arm around locker room – "… and they are not."
Kessel has reached the Zen understanding that usually comes only with age – it's better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than speak and remove all doubt. He might be the only person who's going to escape this season with his dignity intact.
This isn't really about explanations. Here's the explanation – the Toronto Maple Leafs are not very good.
The trouble is the only person who matters any more does not want to talk about it. Or talk at all. To anyone. On the record. About hockey. And, specifically, the Toronto Maple Leafs.
In an interview with The Toronto Star this week, resurgent minority owner of MLSE Larry Tanenbaum was busy getting his digs in on his outgoing rival. But he was also demarcating the power structure going forward.
"The bright lights should never be on the owners," Tanenbaum said, shuffling slightly to get just the right angle of bright light. "They shouldn't be on [soon-to-leave CEO] Tim Leiweke or any CEO. They should rightfully be on Masai Ujiri, Brendan Shanahan and Tim Bezbatchenko."
One of those things is not like the other.
Shanahan is the Leafs president, but Tanenbaum is tacitly conceding that he's also the de facto GM. Tanenbaum knows it and we know it. And if he knows it and we know it, why are we all still pretending it isn't the case when things are going sideways?
When the Raptors were preparing for the tank at this time last year, we saw a lot of Ujiri. He only receded once things were put right.
When the season going off a cliff for Toronto FC last … okay, always … Bezbatchenko was on a podium absorbing the shots.
But Shanahan? He's the invisible man. While everyone else is down in the engine room pumping out bilge water, he's up on deck working on his tan. He appeared on local radio on Friday and said … nothing
He's so absent that Brian Burke managed to sneak into his office this week and begin issuing fiats in the club's defence. That's how it seemed. And, to be fair, someone had to do it.
Lacking any sort of cover from above, the team decided to solve their image problem on their own. Like grown-ups.
After Thursday's win, they didn't go back onto the ice and salute the fans, as has always been their custom.
"To be completely honest with you, it was something about … just changing up our routine," Dion Phaneuf said Friday, after the city once again misplaced its mind.
Basic principle: any sentence that starts with "To be completely honest with you …" is not being very honest with you.
Everyone here looks foolish. The team for doing it. The public for caring. Then the team again for trying to tidy up their transparently passive-aggressive shot at the ACC crowd with an obvious porky pie.
What this spiralling situation needs is the intercession of an actual adult. But the only one available doesn't want to get involved.
You can understand why Shanahan is keeping out of this. This season was always lost. All he wants to do is get to April. By then, he can torch Carlyle and maybe Nonis, and hire Detroit head coach Mike Babcock.
Babcock is his finish line. In the interim, he needs Carlyle and Nonis to wear this wretched season, but he also needs them to survive it.
Those two objectives only align if the team is mediocre, rather than embarrassingly awful. They're sliding from the former to the latter.
The pressure is mounting on Shanahan to do the thing he least wants – give in to public frustration and fire Carlyle now.
Then he'd have to hire an interim coach. What if that guy won? And the fans fell in love with him? That would screw everything up.
So Carlyle is left dangling, with no word at all from his bosses. Shanahan can't be seen supporting or denying him. Any presser he holds right now is going to be perceived as a vote of confidence or a kiss of death. Probably both. It's an impossible bind.
In the end, all Shanahan can do is hide.
While he hides, the team continues popping seams.
While the team pops seams, the executive vacuum will encourage more angst and dissent.
Next year was always going to be a fresh start for the Leafs. We didn't realize until this past week just how scorched the earth would have to be first.