Sergei Bobrovsky has one win in six appearances for the Maple Leafs, and a viral post this weekend made Toronto's spending look even worse.
A Sunday post from @MapleLeaves34 boiled it down in four lines: Florida didn't want to pay Bob, Tampa didn't want to pay Darren Raddysh, and Toronto signed both.
The post adds that both of those teams won back-to-back Cups, while Toronto, in the poster's saltier wording, hasn't won anything in 60 years. It has pulled 80.5K views.
The standings back up the joke. The Leafs are 3-4-2, last in the division and riding a three-game skid into tonight's home date with the Sharks.
The goaltending numbers are rough. A .891 save percentage doesn't cut it at a $7,000,000 cap hit.
Raddysh costs even more. The blue liner carries an $8,500,000 hit, a full million above Morgan Rielly.
Handing a 38-year-old goaltender that kind of money was a bad bet from the start. Stacking a pricey defenseman on top of it turned one risk into two.
Toronto's blue line still hasn't scored a goal this season
Here's the part nobody in Toronto is laughing at. All seven Leafs defensemen who have dressed this season have been held scoreless through nine games.
Raddysh does have four assists, two of them on the power play. He also went minus-3 over that stretch.
His last five games look a little better, with three helpers and an even rating. It's still well short of the paycheque.
Tampa, meanwhile, put that exact same cap number on 36-year-old John Carlson. He already has two goals, one of them a game-winner.
Signing a champion's leftovers is like buying the used car the dealer's own mechanic wouldn't drive home. Sometimes it runs fine, but usually there's a reason it was on the lot.
The Lightning are 6-2-0 and perfect at home.
Florida sits at 5-2-2 after an 8-3 rout of Seattle on Saturday.
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And the Panthers aren't getting brilliance in net. Jacob Markstrom is at .897, barely ahead of Bobrovsky's number, and Paul Maurice's group keeps stacking points anyway.
So who gets the crease tonight? Anthony Stolarz sits at .875 over five appearances, which leaves Jim Hiller without an easy alternative.
The schedule doesn't help. Toronto plays a back-to-back, heading to Columbus on Tuesday, with John Tavares on IR until at least Nov. 27.
Florida visits Toronto on Dec. 3. Tampa arrives Dec. 19, and if the Leafs are still chasing by then, that post is going to get a lot more views.
Was signing Sergei Bobrovsky and Darren Raddysh a mistake by the Maple Leafs?
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