Zee said:
I doubt the leaks are coming from the Leafs side of things. The Babcock rumors were just that, rumors until someone spotted the MLSE plane taking off to Detroit and flying back again. Like I said all the so called "insiders" claimed Babcock wouldn't be coming to Toronto.
Again, that's just not true. Nobody was saying anything definitively about Babcock going anywhere. At best you had people saying that Toronto was a longshot.
Once movement got started away from that, it was reported pretty quickly.
Zee said:
Leading up to firing of Nonis and all those scouts , once again the reporters had no clue what would happen. There were articles claiming Nonis might actually STAY on as GM -- pure speculation because he had been allowed to go through the trade deadline and finish up the season. Nobody knew of the massive firings that Shanahan executed until they happened.
You're creating an unrealistic standard for what constitutes having information. The reason people were saying Nonis might stay is because it was something they were considering. Might implies a lack of certainty. If you say something might happen and it doesn't end up happening, you're not wrong and you very well might(again, might) be reporting with information of what people are actually thinking.
And, to that point, one of the things we do know with certainty regarding the Leafs this off-season is that they were never set in stone about what they were going to do. They didn't know they'd land Babcock, they didn't know Lamoriello would be available...so it makes perfect sense that, internally, there was a lot of discussion about what would play out. Under this current collaborative structure where, as has been described, everything is hashed out among multiple parties it stands to reason that information will come from the team that isn't definitive and that represents maybe only one of the voices in the room.
But more to the point, there's really nothing here that separates the Leafs from any other team or even any previous Leafs organization. If the standard for "leaking information" is that reporters are specifically describing exactly what is going to happen weeks from now then nobody in the entire league leaks information with any regularity.
There was lots of speculation before the season ended that there would be significant internal change after the season was over. That's the kind of vague strategy is the kind of things teams leak. Not "Yeah, we're going to fire Jim".
Again, there's really no reason to think the Leafs are any more quiet with information than anyone else. Think of the things we've heard about, things like the internal discussions about Hanifin vs. Marner or the details of the Pittsburgh trade and the various stages it went through. This is a Leafs team that's been, to their credit, very forthright with the press as they go about remaking the organization. To think that they never talk to them with any substance outside of that stretches credibility to the breaking point.
