Sergei Bobrovsky is taking heat today, and the Maple Leafs goalie didn't have to stop a single puck to earn it.
The problem was Gavin McKenna's rookie lap before Tuesday night's opener against the Canadiens. That skate is supposed to belong to the kid, alone, with the whole building watching.
Stu Cowan didn't hold back on X. He called it unbelievable that Bobrovsky couldn't let the No. 1 overall pick have his own moment.
Then Cowan went further, writing that something is really wrong with the team culture in Toronto.
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It got stranger from there. In a second post, Cowan pointed out that the Leafs did their best to crop the veteran goalie out of their own video of the lap.
The wide Sportsnet angle shows a goalie already on the ice while the rookie glides across the blue line, pockets of empty seats still behind them.
The team's post, captioned "Have a lap, Gav!", is a tight vertical shot with nobody but the 18-year-old in frame.
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Bobrovsky's .875 opener gives Leafs critics more fuel
Was it a bad look? Yes, because the rookie lap is one of the few traditions everybody in this sport still agrees on.
But turning one pregame skate into a verdict on the entire locker room is a reach. Even in Toronto, where a bad Tuesday gets treated like a five-alarm emergency.
Think of the best man wandering onto the floor during the first dance. Awkward, memorable, and nowhere near grounds for calling off the marriage.
The bigger issue came after puck drop, when the Canadiens left Scotiabank Arena with a 3-2 win.
Bobrovsky allowed three goals on 24 shots.
That's a thin night for a $7,000,000 goalie, especially with Anthony Stolarz sitting at $3,750,000 and never touching the ice.
McKenna's night wasn't any kinder. The rookie logged 15:19 of ice time and went minus-2.
William Nylander scored both Toronto goals. Auston Matthews was held scoreless with a -1 rating, which in this market counts as a headline of its own.
And there's no time to reset. The Leafs are on a back-to-back, with Peter DeBoer's Islanders in town for a 7:30 puck drop tonight.
New York hasn't played a regular-season game yet. Fresh legs, walking into a building that spent the last 24 hours arguing about a warmup skate.
So what does Jim Hiller do in the crease? Going right back to Bobrovsky sends one message, and handing the net to Stolarz sends a very different one.
Either way, every camera in the building will find the Leafs goalie tonight. This time, nobody's cropping him out.
Should Sergei Bobrovsky have stayed off the ice until Gavin McKenna finished his rookie lap?
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