Toronto Maple Leafs forward Bobby McMann celebrates after scoring a hat trick against the St. Louis Blues during the third period in Toronto on Feb. 13.John E. Sokolowski/Reuters
After Tuesday’s win over the St. Louis Blues, Maple Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe struck a strange note – satisfaction.
Over his five seasons in Toronto, Keefe has been forced to two tonal extremes. He’s either excusing a crap effort or trying to keep a lid on an exuberant one. More of the former than the latter. It’s rare that he isn’t out there a half-hour after the buzzer trying to massage the next day’s stories.
On Tuesday, the Leafs pushed out one of their least-talented gameday rosters in years. Morgan Rielly is missing through suspension. Mitch Marner and John Tavares were out sick. That’s three of the top five and their only top-drawer defenceman. The result was one of the most complete Leafs’ performances of the season.
The mark of a great NHL team is how they make their opponents look. In the first and third periods, a pretty good Blues’ team looked like they’d been told 10 minutes before puck drop that their day off had been cancelled and that they’d have to work anyway. The Leafs irregulars made the Blues look tired and out of sorts.
“Played a pretty simple game,” Keefe said. And that’s really all he had to say about it. There was no need to embellish.
Simple question then – why can’t the Leafs play that simple more often?
The Leafs recent history demonstrates a rule we all know from our own working lives – the whole is not necessarily the sum of its parts.
Every one of us has worked with someone who is smart and/or hardworking and/or experienced and still can’t get the job done. You know the type – a talker. They can tell you how things should go. In fact, they rarely stop telling you. But they can’t actually do it. Too many Leafs are talkers.
On the other end, we’ve all had a colleague who doesn’t look the type, but always performs. They have figured out that square pegs will fit in round holes if you bash them hard enough.
Brad Marchand epitomizes the type in the NHL. Score a big goal, knock someone out, lick a guy – he will do what he has to do to complete his part of the task.
On paper, the Leafs are perfectly set up. They have high-end talent at every position (except goalie, which started off as a problem and over the years has become an excuse).
On paper, the Leafs shouldn’t just be beating people, they should be shredding them. After ages spent getting to know each other’s quirks and preferences, they should have a telepathic shorthand – like Crosby & Co. not so long ago. This is the best reason to pay all the core guys over-market rates. Because you’re buying on-the-job experience as well as talent.
After all this time, does it often look to you like the Leafs find hockey easy? Does the game they play when they are fully staffed seem simple?
Even to the non-expert eye, it looks ragged. Like one guy is never really sure what another guy is going to do. Just one fer’instance – how do you explain Tyler Bertuzzi?
Bertuzzi took a fashionable one-year contract flyer on the Leafs. The year he’s having shows you why this fad of accepting a little money in the hopes of getting a lot later will soon go out of fashion.
When he played in Detroit and Boston, Bertuzzi was one of the league’s underrated gems. In Toronto, he is cubic zirconia. This poor guy couldn’t locate the net on a fishing trawler.
The last time Bertuzzi scored was around Christmas. Like Christmas, Bertuzzi’s tallies are beginning to seem like seasonal events. In his time as a Leaf, he has fewer goals than Ontarians have had statutory holidays.
The line in Toronto is that this is Bertuzzi’s fault. That, at 28 years old, he has all of a sudden forgotten how to play offensive hockey.
How about if it’s Toronto’s fault? What if something about this team, its players, its tactics and/or its vibe turns good players into mediocre ones?
When was the last time someone with a little history in the league joined the Leafs and got better? Because it seems to happen the other way around with alarming regularity.
Meanwhile, nothing substantive ever changes in Toronto. The main guys remain the main guys, regardless of results. Whenever someone is fit in around them and the team fails to deliver, well, that must be their fault. They should hit the bricks. Go ahead and see if you can make it in somewhere really hard, like Edmonton. Oh, wait, they can make it there? Then Connor McDavid must deserve the credit for that.
On Tuesday, the Leafs had a rare chance to see what things look like when they are different. Not necessarily better, or worse, or looser, or with less on the line. Just different. You have to admit, it looked pretty good.
Maybe St. Louis really did lie down and die at the end of three road games in four days. Or maybe with a little more oxygen out there for the lesser lights to breathe, the Leafs found the chemistry they often lack.
At the very least, Tuesday’s 4-1 win should not be cause for self-congratulation. It’s only useful if it’s cause for consideration.
If that sort of performance is possible with the Bobby McManns and Alex Steeves of the world leading the way, what’s the regular crew’s excuse?
When the headline acts return, should normal operating service resume – as many losses as wins, with on-ice chaos reigning in general – what’s the next move? Or is there one?
Have the Leafs decided they are post-evidence? Are they just going to roll with this cast regardless of how many times they blow their lines on big nights?
If so, they should try to be worse when the main cast takes the day off. It will make the eventual early close of the season easier to explain.