Leafs Coach Calls Out Team For Lack Of Response From Dirty Hit On Auston Matthews

This NHL season has been a miserable one for the Toronto Maple Leafs, and on Thursday night, it looked like it might even be worse than previously thought, despite the team earning a big win over the Anaheim Ducks.

That's because their captain, Auston Matthews, took a knee-on-knee cheap shot from Ducks captain Radko Gudas, and the response was…

…crickets.

Gudas was handed a five-minute major and a game misconduct for the incident, but it was wild to see absolutely no response from the other Leafs.

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Normally, when someone takes a run at your captain like that, you do something about it.

Not this year's Leafs, though, which is wild, considering their head coach, Craig Berube, would've been one of the first ones in there back in his playing days.

"That’s a dirty play," Berube said about the play. "The league is obviously going to look at it and see what the suspension will be, or whatever happens."

Berube said Matthews would be looked at on Friday as they monitor his health, but how about that non-reaction from his team?

"We should’ve had four guys in there doing something about it," he said. "It didn’t happen then, but I thought they responded in the third. It was a good response there. We all would’ve liked everyone to get in there right away."

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This is how you know the Leafs are done, and there's no miraculous run into the playoffs coming.

They just don't care anymore.

Sure, it's hard to care when you're dead last in your division, but a shot like that should still rally the troops.

You see it with a lot of teams that find themselves as bad as the Leafs have this year. And while this might be a blip on the radar, it's kind of hard to imagine them getting back to the top of the Atlantic next season or beyond without making some wholesale changes.