Alright, so we’re four games into the season. The team has completely changed in the past few months, and players are developing chemistry, changing playstyles, and just plain getting used to being members of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Just look at the roster on the official Leafs website. Excluding Bozak and Gunnarsson, 11 out of 28 players are new. Add them, and its 13 out of 30. 40-50%. And you’re shocked that they aren’t up to speed with each other?

It appears so, actually. Even today’s Toronto Star is following with the fans, declaring that Ron Wilson should be fired due to a 4 game losing streak with a team that was projected to barely make the playoffs at best. What’s worse is when you read any Leafs Message Board or Facebook Group. You’ll find such gems such as.

- Brian Burke and David Nonis should immediately resign for destroying the Leafs organization.

- The Phil Kessel trade is worse than Kurvers for Neidermayer/Lindros, Clark II and Schneider for Luongo and Jonsson, Courtnall for Kordic, McCauley Boyes and a 1st for Nolan, Rask for Raycroft, and basically every terrible trade ever made by the Leafs combined. Never mind the fact that the 21 year old 36 goal scorer signed for 5 more years hasn’t played a single game yet and thus should not be deemed a bust, the Leafs have won the 4 game long draft lottery and the Bruins will select Taylor Hall automatically. In fact, he’s playing for them next game and he’s about to win them the 10 game Stanley Cup.

- Jason Blake is so bad that he should stop taking his Lukemia medication and just drop dead. Corpses don’t count toward the salary cap, do they?

- Nikolai Kulemin should be immediately waived to the KHL

- Garnet Exelby should be locked up in a closet until he convinces Don Waddell to reverse the trade (actually, thtas just me)

- Vesa Toskala should be used cut up into 4 peices and used as the targets for the 2011 NHL Skills Competition. He’d stop more pucks that way.

- Mike Komisarek should be fed to Milan Lucic, and finally…

- Everyone remaining on the roster should be traded to the Vancouver Canucks for a signed photo of Cody Hodgson, which will lead them to file tampering charges as it shows interest in the young centre.

Seriously, though I doubt we’ll be murdering our players any time soon, the massive panic people have right now, while a little understandable, is starting to get way too far. The same group that called for multiple year patience in intentionally losing games for the sake of getting high draft picks till the NHL catches on and fines the fuck out of the organization is now seemingly hoping to set the ACC on fire with the team still in it after a week and a half. It’s getting much too out of hand.

If this team bombs, than so be it. But can we at least wait for the top player on the team to come back and at least a quarter of the season before going into panic mode? All we’re doing right now as a fanbase is making ourselves look like idiots.

Also, it just occured to me that this is going to be the very first article on LeafsHQ, and its an unorganized mess of me yelling at people for panicking. Sadly, I think we’re going to have to get used to this.