Pat Quinn: Firing was a necessary change.

Officially the Maple Leafs’ 2005-06 season ended on the final Saturday of the regular season when Martin St. Louis of Tampa Bay scored in overtime against Carolina, assuring Toronto of a finish no higher than ninth place in the Eastern Conference.

However, while the final dagger wasn’t driven into the Leafs’ heart until the 80th game of the year, Pat Quinn’s fate was sealed long before then. And deservedly so.

It will be written that this season’s edition of the team was a mediocre, slow-footed squad that couldn’t compete in the new fast-paced NHL. That much is true.

It will be written that the Leafs faced adversity with injuries to key players such as Mats Sundin, Bryan McCabe, Eric Lindros and Jason Allison. That much is true.

Certainly there were mitigating factors beyond Quinn’s control that hindered this team’s success. However any head coach must be accountable for maximizing his players’ abilities, in the wake of all obstacles. In this respect, Quinn failed. So as the Maple Leafs are spectators and not participants in the NHL’s post-season for the first time since 1998, it must also be written that the dismissal of Toronto’s bench boss was the right move.

Quinn’s defenders will be quick to justify opposition to his firing by evaluating the final ten games of this season in which the Leafs lost only once in regulation time while winning 7 times. The fact that several of Toronto’s young players such as Matt Stajan, Alex Steen, Ian White and Jean-Sebastien Aubin were resolute in the team’s last-ditch effort to qualify for the playoffs is not in dispute, and Quinn’s supporters would cite this as evidence of his ability to continue to lead the team in spite of his reputation as a veteran-oriented coach who is loathe towards youth.

However an examination of the NHL schedule indicates that a season is 82 games long, not 10. Further to that, evidence of a leader’s command of his team is based not on the duration when the team is playing “catch-up” and needs help in the standings, but on the pivotal games that the team must win in order to avoid that scenario in the first place.

And there can be no doubt that Quinn’s players did not respond to the charge for the two March games in Montreal that preceded the Leafs late run.

Toronto did not only lose both games, they did not compete. They were outscored 11-3 by their divisional rivals in the pair of nationally-televised games. Quite simply, they choked.

The embarrassing debacle was a result of the disconnection between the man behind the bench and the 20 skaters on the ice. Whether it was Darcy Tucker taking undisciplined penalties, Nik Antropov giving up on a back-check or the ineffective Tie Domi paying more attention to his discussion with the referees than the on-ice play, it was well below the barometer of what an effective coach could extract from his team.

Besides the Montreal disaster, Quinn’s decision-making comes into question when examining his choices in shootout games where the Leafs were an abysmal 3-7. In Toronto’s final three shootout losses, the same shooters: Sundin, Tucker, and Alexei Ponikarovsky were curiously utilized. Why Quinn did not elect to use the crafty Kyle Wellwood, whose additional year of shootout experience learned in the AHL would have been at least beneficial, is puzzling.

Yet another example of the chess master not using all his pieces effectively. One can only speculate whether the Leafs would have gained at least three extra points in those shootout losses, which would have earned them the eighth seed in the East.

Alas, it’s a moot point. Yet at the same time, had the shootout success come to fruition, it would have been the Leafs, and not the defending champion Lightining, playing the top-seeded Ottawa Senators in the Eastern Conference Quarter Final. Is there anyone out there that honestly believes that the team that folded the tent at the Bell Centre would not have done the same in the nation’s capital, where the intensity and scrutiny would have been ten-fold?

The 2006-07 edition of the Leafs will be based on youth. Stajan, Steen, White, Wellwood, Aubin, and Ben Ondrus were among several young players that their captain Sundin applauded at season’s end. White, Aubin and Ondrus have already had a season of mentorship under the reins of Paul Maurice, head coach of Toronto’s AHL affiliate and the heir apparent to Quinn.

While credit is due to the fourth-highest winning coach in NHL history and his guidance of the Leafs to a pair of conference final appearances during his tenure, the changing of the guard could not have come at a more welcome time.