Each year Maple Leaf fans look for a scapegoat to pin that season's disappointments on. The practice is often unfair because how can you blame one player with all that goes wrong with the Leafs. Often it was the result of a generous contract that puts unrealistic expectations on that player. So the list includes Larry Murphy, Dimistri Khristich, Jonas Hogland, Mike Craig, Aki Berg, Cory Cross, Andrew Raycroft and Bryan McCabe and so on.
It looked like Jeff Finger was going to be this year's scapegoat. He was designated as such because of his contract. Even before he had played a single game for the Leafs, fans were grumbling about Finger. Then along came Ryan Hollweg. The Leafs gave up only a 5th round draft pick for him and he gets paid peanuts to expectations couldn't have been that high. But over the exhibition season he lost 6 fights, took dumb penalties and earned himself a 2 game suspension. What likely put a nail in his coffin was the stupid and reckless hit on Alex Pietrangelo in his first few minutes back from his suspension - that earned him another suspension. In addition, St. Louis was able to get back into the game while the Leafs had to kill off his penalty.
Hollweg is probably like many other hockey players, a decent guy off the ice but makes bad choices on the ice. It's not uncommon for players with little skill who earn NHL jobs by being an agitator, to end up being unable to draw the line on violence. Once you get type cast in the role its hard to break away. Some fans are urging the Leafs to waive Hollweg. Sure they can do that. But someone else will pick up the problem child. Chris Simon found steady work for years until he ran out his string.
In the meantime the hungry and frustrated Leaf fans have their new villain.
