Of course I'm concerned, I'd have to be blind or dumb to not be concerned. But I also recognize that most of them were completely on pace to meet their numbers until roughly mid November when the whole team began the slide. We've played 41% of the season, but the actual regression has been much shorter than that. For example, Kadri had 23 points in the first 27 games and is now pointless in 7. If Kadri was playing like a 50 point player all year, I'd be worried. But he played like a 70 point player for the first 27 games so why should we panic over seven games of slump? 27 games wasn't enough to anoint him a 70 point player, so seven games certainly isn't enough to call him a 50 point player.
The same thing goes for the team itself. Before the slide began, the Leafs were getting absolutely atrocious goal tending and were demolishing teams in possession and scoring. Since the "slide" began, they've been getting outshot and outplayed but saved by elite goaltending. So which of those is the real Leafs? The reality is almost certainly somewhere between the two. What's funny and what my last post was about was that how some people, and you are absolutely a culprit of this, are choosing to focus only on the negatives of the season. Sure, if the Leafs play like this the rest of the season then they'll crawl into the playoffs and are first round bait. But if the Bruins played like they did for the first 17 games of the season (6-7-4) they wouldn't make the playoffs at all. Focusing on that specific stretch of games seems pretty dumb to me, considering that there are 12 more games that the Bruins have played and which are obviously relevant when considering what looks like a good team. Discussing the current struggles of the Leafs is relevant and interesting hockey discussion. Extrapolating those struggles to the rest of the season and calling the whole team a "paper tiger" despite the other 50% of the season being evidence to the contrary is just wishful thinking.
