The Leafs shouldn’t make a single trade. They have to find out what they’re made of

, the definition of madness and all that. If one thing hasn’t labored time and time once more, it solely is smart to attempt one thing totally different, proper?

For many years, winters in Toronto have normally included an anticipatory interval for followers and observers of the Maple Leafs throughout which hypothesis has run wild about participant strikes the group might or ought to make previous to the annual NHL commerce deadline.

On a few of these events, the Leafs had been out of it and dumping gamers. Extra fascinating, naturally, had been the years when the membership was buying a participant or two, or three, thereby augmenting the roster in such a manner that the probabilities of playoff success could be enhanced.

Some years it was about making the eighth and ultimate playoff spot after which perhaps a little bit noise within the post-season. A few occasions — hiya, Owen Nolan — it was about an acquisition which may assist the group truly make a run on the Stanley Cup.

Typically the offers had been stable. Typically they had been silly. All we will state for sure is that none delivered the Cup, or a berth within the ultimate. Since 2004, none even delivered a spherical of playoff success.

Kyle Dubas, as most Leafs basic managers in comparable conditions have tried earlier than him, went this route once more final 12 months, including Nick Foligno from Columbus for a primary round-pick and a fourth-rounder because the Leafs completed first within the now-defunct North Division. Foligno contributed little or no, and the Leafs went out within the first spherical once more.

So maybe this 12 months it’s time to do one thing totally different. To disregard all of the voices calling for this participant or that participant to be acquired by way of commerce.

In different phrases, that is the 12 months to do nothing.

Most individuals would agree the Leafs have the essential expertise and depth to win at the least one spherical within the post-season. They do have the fifth-best successful proportion within the league, in spite of everything. It’s not concerning the expertise on the roster; it’s about how that expertise performs.

So let the expertise play.

A part of the story with the Leafs for a few years has been an annual seek for that addition who will provide the lacking ingredient or elements. Final 12 months with Foligno, it was a imagined to be grit, measurement and toughness. With Nolan again in 2003, it was about including a sniper, one other scorer to enrich Mats Sundin and Alexander Mogilny.

However what if this 12 months’s Leafs relied on the gamers they've, a lot of whom have been groomed and developed by the group for years, to get the job carried out?

This struck me Wednesday evening when the Leafs had been main 3-1 towards Anaheim. The house group was ending off an influence play and all the celebrities had been on the ice collectively: Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, John Tavares, Morgan Rielly.

Because the clock ticked down on the Anaheim penalty, all 5 had been aggressively pushing for an additional aim and none had been being accountable, at a degree within the sport the place one other aim wasn’t essentially what Toronto wanted most. Positive sufficient, Jakob Silfverberg jumped out of the penalty field, the Geese had a three-on-one break and Silfverberg scored to make it 3-2.

The Leafs’ stars, it was clear, weren’t taking part in the sport the fitting manner. Or at the least they had been too targeted on offence to have the correct deal with defence, the sort of balanced method required within the playoffs. That steadiness wasn’t there when Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield had been gifted a two-on-none break in time beyond regulation of Sport 5 towards Montreal final spring.

Properly, if that’s how these high Leafs are going to play, it received’t matter what additions Dubas is ready to make by the March 21 deadline. There’s no probability if the celebrities received’t do all of the soiled jobs essential to win, in the event that they’re simply going to play on the incorrect aspect of the puck when it fits them.

As a substitute of bringing in others, doesn’t it make much more sense to make it clear to these gamers already on the roster that the onus is on them, and entrust them with that accountability?

Each time you go elsewhere so as to add a component, you’re basically telling these gamers they don’t need to do sure duties that they could not need to do. You’re shifting the accountability away from them.

Administration believed it had so as to add Foligno as a result of Matthews et al didn’t have the mandatory compete stage to advance previous the primary spherical, and that turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If the Leafs’ core had performed to their expertise ranges within the playoffs final 12 months, Toronto would have crushed Montreal. However Tavares acquired harm, whereas Matthews and Marner underachieved. If that occurs once more, you may anticipate the outcome to be the identical.

If this present group is wholesome and doesn’t underachieve, it's fully able to beating anyone within the Japanese Convention, together with Florida and Tampa Bay. So after years and years of pondering that including gamers was the best way to get additional within the playoffs, after which studying 12 months after 12 months that wasn’t the reply, now's the time to vary and let this group present what it may do the best way it's.

If it really works, you’ve proven what this roster can do when extra is demanded.

If it doesn’t, you’ve discovered just about all you must find out about your core group, and also you haven’t sacrificed extra draft picks or prospects for the knowledge, supplying you with extra instruments to regulate the roster.

Would possibly Dubas stand pat? It appears unlikely. GMs at all times favor motion to inaction. It’s simpler to elucidate and defend.

However perhaps that’s precisely what he ought to do. Put the onus on this roster, on these gamers.

It’s about time.