Disasters

"I think that the exhibition games I've played, I've played pretty good."
- Jeff O'Neill, who was benched for the third period against the Sens.

O'Neill has played in five pre-season games, putting up the following numbers:

Leafs 3 Sens 1
O'Neill had 14:21 of ice time with a whopping 4:20 on the powerplay (wonder if that means something). One shot on net, 2 hits, +1, one assist and no penalties.

Leafs 5 Canadiens 1
14:04 of ice time, 2:22 on the powerplay. Two shots, 3 hits, no goals, no assists and a minus one on the night.

Leafs 4 Canadiens 3
14:46 of ice time, 4:57 on the powerplay. One shot, one hit, no goals, no assists, finishes even on the night.

Leafs 3 Sens 2 - the night of the missing game sheet.
O'Neill opened the scoring on this night and that's all the stats that are available.

Sens 5 Leafs 3
8:45 on the ice, 1:54 of that on the power play. No shots, no hits, a minor penalty for hooking that the Sens scored on to make it 4-2.

This is what the Leafs are getting for $1.5 million...

Jeff O'Neill scored 41 goals once, but he's a 40 goal scorer in the same sense that Glen Healey is a Stanely Cup winning goalie.

O'Neill's numbers have been in decline ever since that one blip of a season, but it seems whenever the Blue and White land a new player, their upside is all fans and media can see. From Mike Craig to Jeff O'Neill - it's a pretty scary meme that Leafs Nation tends to swallow whole.

Be interesting to see how a club that might be starved for goals handles this one and how the fans and media hordes react...

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One thing that many people may not know about print media is that the person who files the column - be it a stringer, reporter or columnist - does not write the headline. Still, I had to laugh when I surfed over to Slam today and saw the loony sub-head Leafs goalie situation complex: Disaster written all over it I knew it had to be Strachan.

This is a team that had a pedophilia ring run out of its former arena. A team that hasn't made the Stanley Cup finals in 40 years. A club that had a dispicable owner for 20 some-odd years who did jail time and caused long-lasting damage to the organization and many of its employees.

Now those are disasters.

Having to decide which goalie will sit on a bench for 60 games this year? Not so much.

And if they get it wrong, there's such a surplus of goalies on the market it's certainly not an error that can't be corrected. But I guess Leafs goalie situation complex: Team may carry 3 goalies or Leafs goalie situation complex: No clear cut back-up emerges doesn't sell newspapers or generate click-throughs.