Hard truths about the Leafs?

By Olivia Lawrence
RP Show Intern

The Toronto Maple Leafs are currently sitting fifth in the Atlantic Division, 2-3-1 in this National Hockey League (NHL) season. The team is on the road to face the Colorado Hurricanes tonight (Oct.25), and they are looking for a much needed win after two lopsided losses—5-3 against the San Jose Sharks on Friday (Oct.22), and 7-1 on Saturday (Oct. 23) against the Pittsburgh Penguins. 

“They’re just not as good as people think, or maybe hope I guess,” said Bernie Nicholls on Monday’s episode of The Rod Pedersen Show. “It’s sad because I have a lot of friends that love them, and I’m just a hockey fan right, and it’s tough sometimes when you see or hear people talk about how good they think they are, but they’re not.”

Bernie Nicholls is a former NHL star who played 1127 NHL games with the LA Kings, New York Rangers, Edmonton Oilers, New Jersey Devils, Chicago Blackhawks and the San Jose Sharks. He earned 1209 career NHL points and 475 goals. Now he is a Bet Regal Ambassador, and loves working with the Canadian sports betting platform.

“I’m hearing people say ‘oh it’s so hard to be in Toronto,’” said Rod Pedersen. “I don’t know, I’m not from there so maybe they’re right, but I think it would be a dream to play there, how can you use the media as an excuse for the team being crappy?”

“I’ve heard that different times—hard to play in Toronto. Play in New York,” said Nicholls. “I don’t know how you couldn’t love to play where you’re from or in Toronto, period. Yeah, there’s more media and this and that, but you think there wasn’t in Edmonton with Gretz[ky]? Or when Gretz came down to LA, New York, Chicago, all the original six teams. That’s just a copout, that’s an excuse for people…You get paid millions of dollars to play well. I don’t think that’s hard.”

Last season, Leafs fans got their hopes up, but Nicholls knew the team would not stand a chance in the playoffs. The Leafs did not do well in the playoffs because they “played against nobody” in the regular season. He described last season’s North Division as a “minor league division”. 

“Last year was so wrong, like I always tell people they played, it was an international league, what they should have been in, that league was so bad,” said Nicholls. “For the most part, other than Toronto, every team until maybe three quarters of the way through, then Ottawa started playing a little bit better, Winnipeg, Vancouver, but they were just God awful and Toronto just beat up on them.”

Rod Pedersen said he never got sick of the Canadian match-ups last season in the North Division,  but wanted Nicholls opinion on how the Montreal Canadiens made it to the Stanley Cup Finals. They too were in the North Division league and beat-out the Leafs.

“Like I said, they played in a terrible division,” said Nicholls. “So they’re getting in, because if they played in the division that they were in now or the year before, I’m not sure they would have.” 

Nicholls gives credit to the Canadiens defense and goaltender abilities last year, and believed they were more built for the playoffs over the Leafs. He was surprised the team made it as far as they did however.

NHL fans will just have to wait and see what these two Canadian teams can do this season.