The result of a recent Leafs poll involving captain John Tavares is a bit of a head-scratcher

Leafs Nation has had a couple of weeks to stew on how the Leafs' 2022-23 season ended, but for most, seeing the Florida Panthers sweep the Carolina Hurricanes to punch their ticket to the Stanley Cup Finals is not softening the blow any. In fact, a prolonged run by Florida has many entering the mindset of "that should have been us".

Needless to say, there's no way to change the past. What happened, happened. Now we can only look forward and ponder what needs to change this summer to give this team the best chance to win next year. Parting ways with GM Kyle Dubas might not be the best of starts, but depending on who they bring in, the next GM deserves the benefit of the doubt until such a time where the moves he's made warrant criticism.

We all know there are some moves that need to be made this summer. The Leafs don't believe in making changes for the sake of making changes, so the moves that are made will have to benefit the team in some fashion and make them better. We're going to hear a lot of hypotheticals over the next few weeks leading up to the draft and free agency. Some will make the team better, but will be too one-sided to be realistic, and others will involve moving out key players in Toronto for underwhelming returns that would undoubtedly set the team back. It's all part of the typical "long summer for a Leafs fan" experience.

On top of all of the hypothetical trades, there are also some fun questions to ask and answer. On Friday, TSN1050's First Up posted a poll on its official Twitter account, asking fans whether, if given the choice, they'd keep John Tavares for the next 5 seasons or Ryan O'Reilly for the next 5 seasons. However, the results of the poll were a lot closer than they should have been. If you can believe it, after thousands of votes came in, the results were 51% in favour of keeping O'Reilly for 5 years over Tavares, who came in at 49%.



Am I missing something here? Not only did Tavares out-produce O'Reilly in 4 of the last 6 seasons - he's blown him out of the water in the last two. O'Reilly had 30 points in 53 games this past season and 58 points in 78 games last season. Meanwhile, Tavares posted 80 points in 80 games this past year and notched 76 points in 79 games in 2021-22. That's a 68-point differential in favour of Tavares.

There's no question that both players, each 32 years old, have lost a step. However, Tavares has found a way to continue to produce, while O'Reilly has experienced a pretty significant drop off. The one area where you can MAYBE make a case for O'Reilly as the better choice is that ROR has notched a combined 21 points in his last 23 playoff games, whereas Tavares has posted just 17 points in his last 23 playoff games (if you exclude the 2:53) in ice time that he logged in the Montreal series in 2021 before being concussed and removed from the series after a very scary collision with Corey Perry.

Even after giving the playoff edge to O'Reilly, I still don't think you can honestly justify a 51% to 49% vote in favour of O'Reilly over Tavares. I just don't see it. This would be one of those "making a change for the sake of making a change" moves. Sure, your team would have a different look, but it may not necessarily be a better team.

The one thing that I'll concede here is that, assuming you're taking either guy at their current cap hit, O'Reilly at $7.5M may be more enticing than Tavares at $11M, just because of the additional $3.5M you'd be saving in cap space that can be re-allocated elsewhere. However, even then, there's no guarantee that the Leafs would be a better team with that additional $3.5M either. For all we know, they could simply use that $3.5M to bring back Alexander Kerfoot.

Thankfully, this isn't something we'll need to concern ourselves with, as Tavares has a full NMC and O'Reilly is likely to price himself out of Toronto in free agency. Nevertheless, this one was a bit of a head-scratcher for me. One has clearly lost more of a step than the other and while Tavares is certainly the slower skater, he has found a way to remain more consistent and is still an 80-point player at 32. This one should have been a no-brainer.