Former Leaf reveals that he believes the organization knew they'd be fined, but opted to travel anyway
Coming off a chaotic win against the St. Louis Blues Tuesday night, the Leafs were featured numerous times in the headlines of hockey news yesterday. On two separate occasions, the Leafs were fined by the league. The first came to head coach Sheldon Keefe for "demeaning conduct directed at the officials".
The second fine surprised many when news broke that the Leafs were being fined $100,000. The penalty was handed out for traveling to St. Louis earlier than what was allowed under the collective bargaining agreement. Under the CBA, which stated that no travel was to be allowed through the settled holiday break (December 24th to 27th), the Leafs opted to travel late on the 26th to avoid traveling on their game day.
In the newest Leafs Morning Take, presented by the TheLeafsNation on Twitter, former Leaf Jay Rosehill suggests that MLSE was aware of the consequences and made sure everyone was "cool with it" to send the team to St. Louis on the 26th instead of the 27th.
In his explanation, he believes that with the unpredictability of traveling on game day, MLSE was content to soak the 100k fine, which is essentially a slap on the wrist for a franchise worth billions of dollars. In their eyes, leaving early could help get the Leafs out of town amid the ongoing blizzard in Ontario at the time and allow them to prepare for the game a night ahead.
The team and MLSE were likely on the same page where they were not going to risk piling in late or scrambling ahead of game time, no matter the cost of violating the penalty.
In all fairness, the scheduling within the league set the Leafs up for a violation of this rule. Why would the NHL schedule a game in St. Louis where the team is forced to travel the same day? If teams cannot fly in on the 26th, why would they schedule games on the 27th?
