Anonymous NHL player rips the Leafs to pieces in his assessment of the top team in the North

With the playoffs set to kick off this weekend, The Athletic's Craig Custance has assembled a panel that consisted of a coach, an executive, a scout and a player - all anonymous - who were tasked with rating each playoff team and placing them in one of five tiers, 1 being the highest and 5 being the lowest, providing their reasoning for their decisions.

While all 4 of the panel members seemed to agree that Vegas, Colorado and Carolina are the top tier teams who have the depth at all positions, there was at least one notable absence in tier 1 - the North Division's 1st place team, the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The Leafs, who wound up in tier 2, seem to check nearly every box to be in top tier consideration. They have gamebreakers like Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, a top 2 or 3 second line center in the NHL in John Tavares, a ton of veteran depth, grit and toughness in Wayne Simmonds, Nick Foligno, Joe Thornton and Zach Bogosian, they have leadership in spades, a quality defensive corps and a hot goalie in Jack Campbell, who is coming off of a 17-2-2 record across 21 starts. So why don't they belong among in the top tier?

The executive is of the mindset that the Leafs will probably be the team that emerges from the North when the first two rounds are said and done, but the concern is how they handle the top teams from the other divisions.


«I think they'll come out of that group, but if you're talking about winning the whole thing, it's a different game when they come out of that division. Defensively, goaltending, we'll see," said the exec.

Both the scout and the coach listed question marks in goal as the determining factor in the tier 2 rating. With Frederik Andersen having missed 23 games this season and having never won a playoff round during his 5 years in Toronto combined with Jack Campbell never having competed in the playoffs in his NHL career, neither the scout nor the coach felt confident in a tier 1 ranking for the Leafs.

However, while the exec, scout and coach were all quite reasonable in their assessments of this Leafs team, the NHL player really ran the Leafs - and the whole North Division, really, through the woodchipper in his assessment.

«Toronto — they're steamrolling teams in the Canadian division. Guess what? I don't think any of the teams in the Canadian division are good. Any of them. They have no defense. How the fuck can they win the Stanley Cup when they play no defense? I just don't think their forwards care enough about defense to win. I don't know if their goalie is good enough to steal them a series. They're good against the Canadian division. I don't think they're actually good.»

Yikes. That's a really harsh breakdown that I'm sure most would deem a bit unfair, especially considering the fact that the powerhouse Vegas Golden Knights that he placed in the top tier had a 27-5 record against the bottom 4 teams in the West. In fact, the Golden Knights went 15-1 against San Jose and Anaheim, who may both have finished lower than any team in the Canadian Division when all is said and done with Vancouver playing their final 5 games this week, sitting just 4 points back of 25th place San Jose.

Given the anonymity of the player, we cannot be certain that he is not someone with a personal vendetta against the Maple Leafs, so I suppose we should take his assessment with a grain of salt.