Dion Phaneuf is on the verge of signing a seven-year extension with the Leafs, valued at $7 million per year. The cap hit comes with major sticker shock, but it's a deal the Leafs needed to make.

The tide might be turning against Randy Carlyle.

After a quick start to the season has been erased by an awful November and the first few weeks of Deathcember, the shine on Carlyle, the coach responsible for ending Toronto's near decade-long playoff drought, is starting to fade. Last year many of his moves were roundly criticised by the blogosphere and some of the saner elements of the mainstream media (shout out to James Mirtle!), but the Leafs were winning, so for the broader portion of newspaper writers and television analysts Carlyle could do no wrong.

The same reverence for Carlyle no longer exists. Many of his puzzling moves are being questioned by pundits who might have looked the other way last year. Winning cleans up a lot of mistakes, even those made by coaches.

With the Leafs in the midst of a tailspin, the vultures are looking for easy scapegoats, and as always, some in the mainstream media are pointing fingers at the wrong guys.

Simmons "Kadri has basically gone from an 80 point guy to a 50 point guy" Still better than Bozak and not on the top PP or on the top line
— Hope_Smoke (@Hope_Smoke) December 3, 2013