A Letter To Our Friends The Maple Leafs

If you haven’t read it yet, take a gander at Pension Plan Puppet’s letter to the Bruins in the wake of this morning’s news.

Hey gang.

Thanks for reaching out during this trying time. It means a lot. As members of the hockey community, it’s great when we stick together and support one another. So when your talented, but youthful, team fades in the second half, we’ll lend a shoulder to cry on. It’s the least we can do. Honestly.

That said, we’d like to address a few of the minute details mentioned in your coherent, arrogant ramblings.

The Leafs are a young and sexy team, no doubt. If the NHLPA published an equivalent to Maxim, your entire 20-man lineup would be included on the cover. Hell, I have an erection just thinking about it right now.

This season, the Leafs have dominated the Bruins. It’s a level of success never witnessed before in professional sports. As of this afternoon, there you sit, atop the throne of 3rd place in the Atlantic Division. Wow. You are truly among the world’s elite and totally not a bubble team.

Using Danish conversion methods, Andersen’s save percentage in those 14 games is actually 4,340 Danish Clogs per Viking Horn, placing him 26th in the NHL. As James states, you might want to keep an eye on that. Although, if he were to fade, at least you have a solid goaltender behind him. Last I checked, it’s not as if the Maple Leafs employ some journeyman with relatively little success. You know, like a Curtis McElhinney.

Rotating a group of middle-tier defensemen — as evidenced here in Boston — isn’t a recipe for success. Claiming a castoff from a team that’s awful defensively, like the Detroit Red Wings for example, probably won’t fix the issue. Alexei Marchenko, who your all-knowing overlords plucked from the aforementioned Tire Fire Wings, is replacing Frankie Corrado, who Mike Babcock placed in his human sacrifice shed back in November. The swap is brilliant, if brilliance were awarded when replacing a broken television with a broken microwave.

The last two seasons, it’s taken until the last day of the regular season to find out the Bruins were looking on the outside in. It was crushing, akin to watching your wife have an affair with Harrison, your trusty and punctual postman. Will the Leafs qualify? Unlike our beloved Bruins, perhaps. It’s looking good right now.

As you stated, the Bruins have played many more competitions than their opponents. The 4-point mountain they’ll have to climb when your trusted Maple Leafs chew up these games in hand won’t be an easy one. 4 points? That’s 2 whole wins. Nearly impossible in its own right, not to mention trailing Toronto has never worked out for the Bruins before. At least I can’t think of an instance. Can you? It certainly appears as though history is not on the Bruins side.

The Leafs of Maple variety are trending in the right direction, a position that Boston, and its fans, envy greatly. They have an all-world talent at center and a pair of offensively gifted wingers. If only the Bruins had such a trio. Perhaps, one day, the Bruins will assemble a first line of elite players.

For now, though, we’ll have to settle and watch as the skeletal remains of a large Slovakian man continue to find success as a top-pairing NHL defenseman.

A graph! Saucy! If you look closely you’ll see the Bruins logo above the Leafs’ in several key categories, except the one that pertains to luck. I’m not sure what that means, as I’m one of your typical Bruins fan who plateaued with a third grade education. But it’s okay, I’ve found working at Sullivan Tire in Dorchester to be wicked pissah, kid!

Auston Matthews, has just four goals in his last 15 games. Careful, or Steve Simmons may perpetuate a trade to the Pittsburgh Penguins, in which you totally won’t get fleeced for one of the leagues perennial scorers. Nick Spaling’s got a great career ahead of him!

Management, however, isn’t a strength in Boston. So, perhaps my view is flawed.

Firing Claude Julien isn’t going to make life easier on our gritty group of mouth-breathing neanderthals. Don Sweeney, to whom you so eloquently eluded, deserves the blame for assembling a team that has, frankly, become an embarrassment to professional sports.

David Backes is a nice man who adopts dogs, but, admittedly, he’s not worth the $30 million Sweeney gave him in July. It’s absolutely absurd a 20-goal, 40-point player who provides above-average two-way play be paid $1 million more than he rightly deserves, per season. Just thinking about his contract makes me want to pull a tree from the ground and throw it at my father’s 2002 Honda Accord.

Passing up the chance to trade Brandon Carlo (he’s tall!) for Jacob Trouba is a real bummer, as well. Carlo, at 20, has reached his peak as a hockey player. There is little room for the native of Colorado Springs to grow. While Carlo is spending the bulk of his afternoons foraging for treasure at the bottom of Boston Harbor, Trouba is playing the kind of hockey that causes people to stop in their tracks and proclaim “wow, that man is indeed playing the sport of hockey.” Sweeney really dropped the ball on that one.

Right now, you’re smiling, and rightly so. The future is bright. One of your oldest divisional rivals fired one of the league’s top coaches and replaced him with a human bowling pin.

No matter how the season pans out, we’ll be here for you. Much the way you opened your hearts for us.

Love,

Your Pals at SCOC