John Chayka and the Toronto Maple Leafs started this offseason on shaky footing, and plenty of people still haven't updated their opinion since.
His introductory press conference turned into a public back-and-forth involving a reporter and team president Keith Pelley, and it left a lot of fans uneasy from day one.
Since then, though, Toronto has quietly been one of the more active teams in the league all summer.
Sergei Bobrovsky signed on as the club's new starting goaltender, a real name-brand move that doesn't get made by a front office sitting on its hands.
Toronto also isn't rebuilding here, and that's by design. The team doesn't control its own first-round pick for the next couple of seasons, which rules out a full reset anyway.
The lottery win for Gavin McKenna gave this front office a legitimate star prospect it otherwise wouldn't have had, a real stroke of luck along the way.
Put it together and the vision looks like this: stay competitive now, keep adding pieces, and let the actual games settle the rest.
Why the cap management grade gap says the most
A recent public-versus-fan-base grading exercise showed a real split in how this front office is being viewed right now.
The public gave Toronto's front office an overall C-minus, ranking 25th in the league. Fans gave it a C-plus, good for 20th.
Cap management produced the widest gap of all, a D-plus from the public against a C-plus from fans, likely residue from years of cap-strapped Toronto rosters.
Draft and development, trading, and free agency all followed a similar pattern, with fans consistently grading a notch or two higher than outside observers.
Interestingly, roster building was the one category where the public actually scored Toronto kinder than its own fan base did.
Is the fan base being too generous, or is the public still judging this front office on reputation instead of actual results? Probably some of both.
Either way, nobody settles this argument until Toronto actually starts playing games that count.
Is the Maple Leafs fan base too generous with John Chayka's front office grade?
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