Quoting: KoneDome
At some point you need to ask "What has Babcock actually done each year with the leafs?"
Yr 1: He took a team of misfits and had them playing very respectable hockey, competed every night, rarely got blown out, and still finished last place. However, easy to say that had little to do with him because literally half the roster was competing to stay in the NHL.
Yr 2: Possibly Babcock's biggest achievement in TO. Taking a team of 6 (maybe more?) rookies and blowing the doors of teams with their speed and skill, but were very shaky defensively. However, you have to ask how much of this was Babcock, and how much of it was eager rookies trying to make a name for themselves and trying to hit bonuses.
Yr 3 & 4: We know how they ended, and if anything there has been a gradual decline in level of play since Yr 2. They have the same defensive deficiencies and propensity to let the other team get the first goal as they had two seasons ago. One compliment to Babcock is that he has done a great job developing Marner into a 200 ft player, but you can't necessarily say the same thing about Matthews or Nylander. How much of this is on the coach and how much is on player I am not sure.
Moving Forward: We are 5-4-2 which isn't acceptable. Only teams we have beat are OTT, CBJ, DET, MIN, & BOS. Those were four teams are likely bottom 10 teams in the league.
Next 5 games are SJS (H), MTL (A), WSH (H), PHI (A), LAK (H). In my opinion, if they don't get at least 7 points from those games, Babcock should be gone. Say they 2-2-1 in those games and their record now is 7-6-3, then we could already be 8-10 points out of division lead.
Rant over.
The Leafs definitely haven't declined since year two, a pair of tight 7-game losses against Boston are a lot more impressive than a 6-game loss against Washington, and there's a been a massive difference recordwise between the wildcard and 3rd in the Atlantic with how topheavy that division is.
The losses to Boston are mostly down to the Bruins just having a better roster. The issue is that roster difference is down to Boston's top guys being better overall (Offence+Defence) than their Toronto counterparts. It's not really clear how to fix that: the only realistic Bergeron-level players to change teams recently are Tavares, EK, Stone and Hamilton. The Leafs had legitimate chances of landing exactly 2 of those players (OTT refuses to trade within the Atlantic because reasons) and got one of them. They just haven't had opportunities to add the top-end talent they need to beat teams with those guys consistently. This is feasibly a top-5 roster, but Boston and Tampa are top-3 rosters.
.500 record isn't acceptable but the Leafs are a top-5 team in CF% (Corsi > xG for this season due to the location bug) and realistically this roster isn't going to consistently underperform its playdriving, even if you're bearish on Freddie. The defensive deficiencies are a function of the roster: Guy Boucher won coach of the year and wasn't able to make Ceci not apocalyptic on D, Rielly's been bad defensively his whole career, JT was bad defensively on the Island, Nylander's D was decent last year :
https://gyazo.com/a58939894bd1bf4ceb5418c2b24dc2f1, so that basically means Matthews among the core guys could feasibly have been better defensively under a different coach. This team's also had a LOT of back-to-backs, and given how young the season is, that has a big impact on their record. It's been a lot better than it looks.
The fundamental truth is Toronto's roster is worse than Boston's and has no realistic way to become better than Boston's unless someone wants to take a machinegun to their foot. Best thing they can do is stick to the plan and hope they get lucky in the spring.