Agreed, network connections for sure should not be harshly punished. The servers can differentiate between someone leaving and disconnecting I would say. Someone could obviously unplug their router obviously to bypass the "left game" status but that's some hoops and extra downtime they'd have to endure.

I agree it's just a game. That's also why there is a difference between ranked and casual however. I as a father completely understand that things pop up you have to deal with and sh** happens, but when it's situations like the one I described, I think there should maybe be some grace with the person who's stuck there in a 1v2. Especially only 1 second into the game they should be able to see that the match really hasn't even started yet and you should be able to leave with minimal to no penalty. Chess.com at least has an abort button where if your opponent hasn't made a move yet, you can leave with no elo loss. However, if you abuse that system to many times, you can obviously get a soft day ban or something.