As the last-place team in the Eastern Conference, the Toronto Maple Leafs are in the muck amid their worst start to a season in ages.
Losers of seven of their last 10 games (3-5-2), the Maple Leafs have put in uninspired effort after uninspired effort, and that’s reflected in their brutal 9-10-3 record.
There’s plenty of blame to go around. But what could be one of the biggest misfires of the Leafs’ off-season was acquiring a pair of wingers – Dakota Joshua and Mattias Maccelli. In the wake of star winger Mitch Marner’s off-season departure to the Vegas Golden Knights, Leafs GM Brad Treliving used about 60 percent of Marner’s cap space on Joshua and Maccelli. And that investment hasn’t paid off so far.
In 22 games, Joshua has two goals and five points while averaging 12:21 of ice time. In 21 games, Maccelli has four goals and nine points while averaging 13:10. Considering that Joshua’s $3.25-million salary and Maccelli’s $3.425-million salary combine for nearly $7 million, we’re talking a good chunk of change for a total of six goals and 14 points. Yikes.
No wonder TSN analyst, former NHL winger and radio star Jeff O’Neill said Monday that Joshua and Maccelli “have done jack squat” this season.
“Their 5-on-5 play, they’re invisible,” O’Neill said on Overdrive. “They don’t do anything. They shouldn’t be in the lineup. The only reason that they are is because they were acquired, and there’s nobody else to play.”
Nobody was asking the two new additions to be the next coming of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, but to say Treliving’s gamble on Maccelli and Joshua has not paid dividends would be an understatement. In fact, the way things are playing out, those gambles have been among Treliving’s worst as Toronto’s GM.
Marner’s departure was always going to sting, but the plan was that Joshua’s physical edge would give the Leafs something they needed more of. And the plan for Maccelli was that, given a bigger role, he would revert to the form he showed two years ago. Neither of those plans has panned out as hoped.
Instead, most nights, Maccelli and Joshua have been invisible. If they were on one-year contracts worth the league-minimum salary, their stats would be merely disappointing. Alas, with their actual salaries, that production is scary, and not in a good way.
And think, we’ve still got 60 games ahead for the Leafs. If they stay at the bottom of the standings all season long, the air over Leafs Land will be blue-and-white-and-toxic.
Maccelli and Joshua aren’t the root of Toronto’s problems, but they are part of the problem. And unless they and their teammates turn things around in short order, it’s going to feel like forever between now and the Leafs season’s merciful end next spring.
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