The personal accolades of the Leafs are meaningless in club collapse

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Auston Matthews leads the NHL in goal scoring — and today that doesn’t mean a damn thing. Not if the Maple Leafs can’t play any better than they played Sunday night.

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Mitch Marner is the fastest Leaf to score 600 points in the storied history of the club — and today that fine number doesn’t mean a damn thing. Not if the Leafs can’t play any better than they played Sunday night.

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William Nylander has signed a contract that will pay him more than $11 million next season and for the seven seasons after that — and today all those numbers are basically meaningless. Not if the Leafs can’t play better than they played on the weekend.

The Leafs have four players going to the National Hockey League all-star game early next month — the only team in the NHL with four all-stars — and you know who else is full of all-stars? The Dallas Cowboys.

They have seven players voted to the Pro Bowl. They were embarrassingly eliminated by the Green Bay Packers on Sunday. The Packers have no players voted to football’s all-star game.

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Team sport isn’t about individuals. It isn’t about contracts. It isn’t about trophies and all-star team choices.

It’s about a group of players coming together, working together, playing a system, playing with structure, playing with intensity, working in cohesion with the coaching staff.

Right now, the Maple Leafs are none of those things.

They were outplayed and outworked and out-systemed and outcoached by the Red Wings on Sunday night after blowing a 3-0 lead at home Saturday night against the very strong Colorado Avalanche.

They should have won two games on the weekend, not none.

The Saturday collapse wasn’t good. The Sunday effort, from beginning to end, with the struggling Ilya Samsonov actually looking like he’s on the way back in goal, was pathetic.

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And the team not responding to Samsonov in any way was another low point for a club that has had too many low points in this season and in this era of the top-heavy, rich, failed strategy of success that club president Brendan Shanahan and any of the three general managers who have worked for him have deployed over and over again.

On Saturday night, the great Nathan MacKinnon outworked and outplayed and outscored Matthews. On Sunday night, the great Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin outworked and outplayed and outscored Matthews.

This isn’t an individual sport. But within the game, there are individual battles, puck battles, battles on the forecheck, battles around both nets that need to be won, that need to be fought — and the Leafs seem far too reluctant too often to be considered great.

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This normally is the time when the question of a coach firing becomes a discussion. When a team isn’t going right. Whatever it is that Sheldon Keefe is trying to do with this team it isn’t working. Keefe, like Matthews, like Marner, like Nylander, has incredible numbers, too, coaching the Leafs.

He has a winning point percentage of .669 in his time in Toronto during the regular season. You don’t tend to fire coaches with .669 winning numbers — that’s better than Rod Brind’Amour, that’s better than Jon Cooper, that’s better than Bruce Cassidy.

Normally, there’s a sense of timing to a coach firing. You see a break in the schedule. You see some time to adjust. But this timing couldn’t be worse if this is actually being considered.

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The Leafs head out West in the coming days. They play in Edmonton against the steaming hot Oilers on Tuesday, in Calgary on Thursday, and Saturday night against the NHL’s best team today, the Vancouver Canucks.

Do you put a new coach in that precarious a situation?

After a game in Seattle, the Leafs play back-to-back games against the also-hot Winnipeg Jets.

This is the kind of schedule that can break a team — or in the case of this top-heavy-talented Leafs team, maybe wake them up, maybe frighten them a little. Maybe get them to understand who they are and what they’re not and what they need to be.

It’s wonderful the Leafs have four players — Morgan Rielly being the fourth — going to the all-star game. It’s wonderful and right now it’s also a touch meaningless.

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As of Monday morning, the Leafs had the 11th-best record in the NHL, one point ahead of Nashville and Detroit, two points behind the Philadelphia Flyers, of all teams.

They have the fewest wins in regulation of any team among the top 20 in the league. That’s an important number.

At the halfway point after 41 games, they are on pace for a 100-point season.

They had 111 points last year, 115 the year before that, and played at a 112-point pace in the shortened season of 2020-21.

You can celebrate how many goals Matthews scores, how many points Marner winds up with, how much money Nylander will be making: None of it means a damn thing if this team doesn’t get better.

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