Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Simmah-Down-Now

Everyone take a deep breath.

Yes, the Leafs got owned 7-1. Yes they played like shit. Yes Brian McCabe took the hardest body check he's taken this year from the net.
But guess what? I am not worried. I am however a might irritated that the Leafs so easily gave up and withered away from the game after they went down 3-1, but this happens all the time. Not just to the Leafs, but everyone. Can you name one team that hasn't been blown out before? Once? Twice? Several times a season? Jesus people, its game 4 of 82, there is a little wiggle room for improvement.
Why were the Leafs so dead in a game that should have been so charged with emotion when Blake had just announced that he had cancer? A game that Sundin could become the highest scoring Leaf of all time? Well thats simple, they sucked. Does it mean they will suck for the rest of the year and that they should just pack their bags and dig out the golf clubs? Hell no, what the hell is wrong with you?

Toskala, poor little Vesa. He got his bell rung. He played some incredible hockey for the first period and most of the second. Until the floodgates opened and his team no longer seemed to give a damn. Saying the Tosk sucks after a game like last night is ludacris, the fact that he was able to give the Leafs a chance to come back for even a period shows just how good he is. Two goalies in all the NHL may have been able to keep that up all game.
I also can see where Maurice was coming from in not pulling The Tosk. Better to let him get used to the Boo-birds in a game that he knows he really didn't play that badly in and a game that has no real pressure, no real consequences (unless we miss the playoffs by one point again) than in say a game down the stretch when the Leafs are clawing for a playoff birth.

It was a blip (a frustrating blip, but a blip no less) and it means nothing in the long run.

Simmah-down-now.