The Maple Leafs Core Four Was Not a Failure of Vision
You know, I’ve been writing about the Toronto Maple Leafs for nine seasons now, and every time the conversation turns to the “Core Four,” I feel the need to push back a little.
Sometimes Life Throws You a Curveball.
Right now, as the Maple Leafs sit on the cusp of hiring a new general manager, there’s a lot of talk about analytics versus old-school gut instinct. People are quick to blame the previous regime for locking up Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, John Tavares, and William Nylander on those big contracts. They say it drained the salary cap and left the team unable to build properly around them.
Right now, on paper, it looks like a bad choice. Four players eating up such a huge chunk of the cap definitely limited Toronto’s flexibility for several years.
But here’s the part that always gets left out: nobody — and I mean nobody — saw COVID-19 coming.
Kyle Dubas Couldn’t Have Been Biff Tannen.
In Back to the Future Part II, the character Biff Tannen got his hands on the Gray’s Sports Almanac from 2015 (the future) and used it to make bets in the past, becoming extremely wealthy because he knew all the sports outcomes in advance.
Kyle Dubas didn’t have that luxury. He signed those deals in a pre-pandemic world where the salary cap was expected to keep rising steadily. Revenue was growing, the league was healthy, and long-term commitments to elite young talent looked like smart business. Without the pandemic, that salary growth probably would have continued, and those contracts wouldn’t have felt nearly as heavy. The Maple Leafs likely would have had more room to add supporting pieces and balance the roster the way they intended.
The Salary Cap Flatlined and the Maple Leafs Paid for It.
Instead, the salary cap basically flatlined for years while player salaries kept climbing. What looked like a reasonable plan suddenly became a financial straitjacket.
Sure, the Maple Leafs made plenty of mistakes on the ice. They had their chances in the playoffs and didn’t close the deal. That part is fair game for critique. But pinning the whole thing on “bad contract management” while ignoring the once-in-a-century global pandemic feels a bit unfair.
My take, in looking back, is that it’s really hard to blame anyone for not predicting something like COVID. Nobody had that in their forecast.
The Core Four Era Wasn’t a Maple Leafs Failure of Vision.
The Core Four Era wasn’t an illogical vision. It was a plan that got blindsided by something no one could have seen coming. The team could have managed the cap more carefully in hindsight, but let’s not pretend the pandemic didn’t completely rewrite the rules.
Now, as the Maple Leafs move forward with a new GM, maybe it’s worth remembering that sometimes even the best-laid plans get derailed by events far bigger than hockey.