Quote:
Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
No kidding. Just looking at the smug grin on the guy's face makes me cringe. Total embarrassment to the fan base.
Can someone remind me why they fired Carlyle again? Sure the team played sloppy defense but they did at least score a lot of goals. Now they are a complete train wreck as they can't do anything right including putting pucks in the net. They look like a totally defeated group.
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It was probably a rhetorical question, but it looks like they had planned to axe Carlyle all along and just needed a good reason to do so. The beginning of the end was probably the 4-1 loss to Carolina on December 18th. The Leafs were in 6th place in the Conference (19-10-3 record), had just won 10 of their previous 12 games, and were feeling good about themselves. Then they lose 4-1 to Carolina, and 6 of the next 8 after that, giving up 3.9 goals/G in the process.
Within a period of 16 days they dropped from 6th in the East to 8th and saw their playoff odds drop from 95% to 51%. They were probably hoping the coaching change would give them an emotional boost, enough to sustain a playoff position, but all it did was initiate the freefall. 2 Weeks after firing Carlyle they had further dropped to 10th in the Conference and were down to an 8% chance to make the playoffs.