And once the trust is broken between team and coach and goaltender — each of those has to be working in sync for success — it becomes a matter almost impossible to repair.
Samsonov has reached the awkward hold-your-breath stage of NHL goalies. When every shot is taken you wonder: ‘Is it going in, how is it going in?’ And no team can operate with that kind of uncertainty at its most important position.
We can see it from afar. The players can see it up close. The coach, Sheldon Keefe, is living it and is privately livid about it. When the Leafs need to score five, six or seven goals to have a chance to win on any night with Samsonov in net, they have no hope of moving forward.
This is not unlike what happened to Alek Manoah last summer with the Blue Jays. A starting pitcher is alone on the mound and vulnerable in the same way a goaltender is the last line of defence in hockey. When Manoah couldn’t get anyone out, the Blue Jays removed him from their rotation and eventually from the roster.
In the salary-capped National Hockey League, the moving of players is not as simple. The Leafs are searching for an answer, another goalie, another body, somebody to get in the way of a puck. Nobody in hockey is ready to do them a favour.
This is the first crisis for Brad Treliving as general manager of the club.
What he does with Samsonov — I would waive him, no one would claim him — and replace him temporarily before young starter Joseph Woll returns.
The Leafs need to find a way to get to February without Samsonov, who is on a one-year contract with the club.
Last year, he took one year to bet on himself. This year, it was all that was offered.
THIS AND THAT
Numbers can lie: Samsonov has started 55 games as a Leaf. He has won 32 of those games … This is Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner’s eighth season with the Leafs. The Leafs goalies in those years: Freddie Andersen, Jack Campbell, Matt Murray, Petr Mrazek, Curtis McElhinney, Michael Hutchinson, Erik Kallgren, Garret Sparks, Martin Jones, Samsonov and Woll. No comment necessary … Mats Sundin’s goalies with the Leafs: Primarily Curtis Joseph, Ed Belfour and Felix Potvin.
Wonder how this Leafs team would get along with that quality of netminding … Matthews is scoring at a 70-plus goal pace, which is semi-breathtaking. William Nylander is having the season of his dreams and the Leafs are 13th in points in the NHL standings, ninth in points percentage. This is what crappy goaltending and ordinary team defensive play does to undermine a club … When Cliff Fletcher was GM of the Atlanta Flames, he signed goalie Jim Craig, hero of the 1980 U.S.
Miracle on Ice team. Turned out, Craig wasn’t much of an NHL goalie. Things got so bad in Atlanta that Fletcher ordered the players to shoot right at him in the pre-game warmups, hoping it would raise his confidence. It didn’t work. The next year, the Flames moved to Calgary and Craig tried to hang on with the Boston Bruins.
One of those moves worked out well … Vancouver’s magician defenceman Quinn Hughes has more assists this season than Connor McDavid, Nikita Kucherov, Mitch Marner or Elias Pettersson. More assists than everyone in the NHL except Nathan MacKinnon. Hughes is a candidate for both the Norris Trophy and Hart Trophy as the half-season approaches … TheLeafs have first-pair defencemen in Morgan Reilly and TJ Brodie. But after that, the rest of the blue-line corps are 5, 6 and 7s. They need some 2s, 3s and 4s. The more Jake McCabe plays, the more he gets exposed … The great Ray Ferraro on goaltending: “You don’t need the best, but you can’t have the worst.”