It's still early into the season. Just a year ago in January the worse team in the league were the St Louis Blues and they ended up squeaking into the playoffs and then winning the Stanley Cup.
However, the Leafs have indeed struggled although they're still 2nd in the league in scoring. Injuries have hurt them throughout the season and now one of their best players (Mitch Marner) is out for at least a month. Another player got hurt last night (shoulder) and tonight their new backup goalie will make his NHL debut in Pittsburgh.
The Leafs have also had a very tough schedule to deal with. They've had many back-to-back games and their former backup goalie would play all the back-to-back games and couldn't stop a beach ball if his life depended on it! In Chicago last Sunday they had 56 shots on net yet the Hawks scored 6 goals against Hutchison. Enough was enough and he was put on waivers the following day.
Leafs Nation wants Babcock fired but i can't see this happening yet since he still has 3 years left to go on a contract which pays him $5 million per season. I doubt the team's shareholders and board of directors will agree to having someone stay at home for the next three years while getting paid $15 million!
In my opinion Babcock's not the problem. He's stuck coaching players given to him by GM Kyle Dubas. Dubas is the one who bungled the backup goalie situation last season by letting Curtis Mclhinney & Calvin Pikard go in favor of Garrett Sparks, who ended up going to Vegas following last season. Dubas is the one who made the trade which sent Nazem Kadri to Colorado for Tyson Barrie & Alex Kerfoot. Kerfoot's been good but Barrie's been absolutely awful. Dubas is also the one who traded Connor Brown & Nikita Zaitsev to Ottawa for Cody Cecci. Cecci's been okay but he's overused and used improperly mostly because of Travis Dermott's injury. But Connor Brown, like Kadri was a premiere penalty killer and a dependable player. Dubas also chose not to re-sign dependable veteran defenceman Ron Hainsey. And veteran player & leader Patrick Marleau was shipped off to Carolina but Dubas needed to make the move in order to clear up cap space in order to re-sign Mitch Marner. And he chose not to re-sign the skilled Jake Gardiner, who wanted to stay in Toronto but the organization felt he had to leave...mostly for cap reasons.
I believe the Leafs were a better team last season. They had Kadri, Marleau, Hainsey, Zaitsev, Brown and Gardiner. Garrett Sparks was a decent backup as compared to what they have now. The big difference this season is that their special teams suck!! When you consider that the players they lost in trades or chose not to re-sign were key elements on their special teams well you don't have to go very far to figure out where the problem lies.
But in soccer a goal keeper will not get and stop many shots. 