The Toronto Maple Leafs face the Pittsburgh Penguins in Toronto this Saturday.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
As any fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs will tell you, dreams are important.
But Steven Lorentz is no longer just a fan. Entering Saturday’s home opener, he’s the team’s leading scorer, having set up one goal and scored what stood up as the eventual game winner on Thursday night in New Jersey, in just his second game for the team.
As someone who grew up in Kitchener, Ont., with a Mats Sundin poster on his bedroom wall, wearing Leafs pyjamas and cheering on the Buds, Saturday’s matchup with Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins is a proof that hockey careers really can come full circle.
If further evidence on the power of dreams was needed, it was provided late Thursday by Lorentz’s sister Steph, who shared a picture of her brother’s Grade 8 school yearbook photo on social media, along with the answer to where he would be in 15 years. ‘Playing in the NHL (with the Leafs),’ was the reply.
However, between Lorentz and his dad – both diehard Leaf fans – it’s hard to know who will be more excited for Saturday’s home opener.
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“He just said, ‘How are you gonna top that on Saturday?’” Lorentz said of a text message he received from his father Mark after Thursday night’s 4-2 victory. “I don’t know man, we’ll see.”
Certainly Lorentz – who was only invited to Leafs training camp on a professional tryout – has started to earn the trust of head coach Craig Berube. Despite playing on the fourth line, the 28-year-old winger received the fifth-most time on ice among the Leaf forwards Thursday night, trailing only Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and Matthew Knies. And he was out on the ice for the final 1 minute 26 seconds alongside Matthews and Marner as the Leafs held off the Devils for their first win of the season.
“He’s a second- and third-effort guy, but he’s smart, knows how to play the game the right way defensively, has a real good stick,” Berube told reporters on Thursday. “He’s big and gets in the way. That’s really what his game is.”
It probably doesn’t hurt the relationship between player and coach that Lorentz, like Berube, is a Stanley Cup champion, earning his ring earlier this year after contributing three points across 16 playoff games for the Florida Panthers.
And Lorentz, like his head coach, understands the value of a north-south game, where both simplicity and safety-first are paramount. When asked how his style of play meshes with Berube’s vision for the team, Lorentz was more than happy to expand on it.
“I think he just likes it a little more old school, and it’s a winning formula,” the winger said. “You look back at the winning teams over the past few seasons, you obviously have your skilled guys that are gifted, and they can make all the plays, and those guys are going to do their thing.
“But he wants big bodies and guys who can skate and stuff to create that energy and that’s the identity of the team.”
It might be a stretch to call this Leafs squad a quote-unquote lunch-pail gang just two games into the Berube era. However, it doubtless pleased him that after the team’s high-powered offence got shut out in Montreal in Wednesday’s season opener – the first time the Leafs were shut out in 252 successive games – the lesser lights picked up the slack on Thursday. The bottom-six forwards accounted for the first three goals, with only John Tavares – from the Leafs’ so-called glamour players – finding the back of the net.
Case in point, after the first two games last year, the Core Four of Matthews, Marner, Nylander and Tavares had 19 points among them.
“We talk a lot about winning net fronts, and that certainly showed, I thought, in the first period,” Tavares said on Thursday. “They came up big, made some great plays, and built a nice lead for us.”
As was to be expected, the team showed a little rust over the opening two games, with the Leafs displaying a penchant for taking stupid penalties, and in the win over the Devils, an inability to close out periods, with the team giving up a pair of last-minute goals.
But equally important was the power play, which continued to fire blanks, just as it did in the playoffs last spring, where it went 1-for-10 in the team’s seven-game loss to the Boston Bruins. The team has since hired Marc Savard to oversee that department.
“Our entries aren’t very good,” Berube said after watching his team go 0-for-6 over the first two games. “For one, both teams we played the line’s pretty stacked, right? And we’re not putting pucks in and just going to work and getting them back. So that’s one area, and the other area, for me, is we’re not attacking and shooting enough. We’re kind of passing it around, looking to pass it in the net.”
Against a Pittsburgh team that has surrendered an average of four power plays a game through the first two contests, fans of the Leafs will hope that Matthews, Nylander and Marner get more than a few gilt-edged opportunities to open their 2024-25 accounts on Saturday night.