In the hours leading up to the Toronto Maple Leafs’ season opener on Wednesday, Leafs Nation was fuming on Twitter. But it wasn’t about the impending captaincy announcement. Nor was it about Scott Sabourin’s beef with Auston Matthews. It wasn’t even about something that actually mattered in the larger scheme of things.



It was about a fourth-line centre.



In case you missed the drama over the past several days, Mike Babcock had decided to healthy scratch Jason Spezza in favour of Nick Shore. Typically, a roster decision like this wouldn’t cause too much of a fuss. It’s common for fourth line players to bounce in and out of the lineup based on their play (and Spezza didn’t look great in the preseason, although he performed very well in his season debut last night against Columbus).



What I found so interesting about this storyline was how it contrasted with last year’s concerns around Babcock overplaying older...