JOHANSSON PUTS A CAPPER ON LEAFS’ BREAKOUT SEASON
From his knees, Frederik Andersen didn’t move, maybe couldn’t move. He scooped the puck out of his net and shot it off the boards in disgust.
It was over.
Head coach Mike Babcock looked up at the scoreboard, his eyes piercing, his expression almost blank. He never loses well, but this was worse. He then walked from the Toronto Maple Leafs bench for the last time this season, took two steps, shook hands with his counterpart Barry Trotz, and then they hugged one of those giant, emotional hockey hugs. It was over.
By this time, Nazem Kadri couldn’t make the skate that most of his teammates made in the direction of their goaltender. He needed some time. It was too soon for him, too soon for those still in the stands chanting “Go Leafs go” over and over again. They wouldn’t or couldn’t leave — not on this overtime night, not in this playoff series finale with the Washington Capitals — not yet, anyhow.
It was over.
This is how it ended for the most likable and promising Maple Leafs team in a quarter of a century. It really has been that long. After 66 minutes and 31 seconds, there was both was a beginning and an end: It was the last night of this great and surprising Leafs season, but the beginning of better things, better seasons to come.
And on this Sunday, it was difficult to think about one without the other — so much disappointment, so much promise, so much pride.
“The reality is, it was a great year for our team. It would have been great to play in Game 7,” Babcock said after calming down enough to do his post-game news conference. He despises these season-ending things, except for the year his team carried the Stanley Cup in Detroit. He despises trying to capsulize so much in so few sentences.
“If you’re not from Toronto, you don’t know how spectacular it is,” he said. “This is the best place you can ever play. I’ve never seen anything like this.
“Now you need a team to match…”
They lost Game 6 in overtime, 2-1 to the Washington Capitals, just as they lost Game 5, by the same score, same number of periods. Six games, four losses, five overtime games in all. The difference came after the Leafs took a 1-0 lead. Playing with house money, with nothing to lose, Toronto stopped going for it. The Capitals, with so much pressure on them, took over the puck.
“I just thought we went for it,” Trotz said. “I like that mentality.”
“We didn’t push them,” Babcock said, talking about most of the third period and the overtime. “They pushed us.”
Trotz said that after he congratulated Leafs team president Brendan Shanahan, general manager Lou Lamoriello and his friend, Babcock, on a superb season. The playoff series was both entertaining and heartbreaking, but this seemed a different kind of heartbreak than the usual Toronto ending. There is so much to look forward to here. There is real hope.
Babcock did make one cryptic comment in his post-game commentary.
“In the playoffs, there is no place to hide,” Babcock said.
If you’re not from Toronto, you don’t know how spectacular it is.
He was probably referencing Martin Marincin, the sometime Leafs defenceman who was playing only because Roman Polak went down and happened to be on the ice for both of Washington’s goals by Marcus Johansson.
The first came in the third period with Johansson close to the Leafs goal. The winning goal came after Marincin didn’t seem strong enough to hold off Johansson. The next time you see Marincin, he could well be on defence in Las Vegas.
And in the end, like Marincin, the Leafs weren’t strong enough to hold back the Caps, who outshot Toronto 5-1 in overtime.
In the handshaking lineup, that great tradition of hockey, the generational Alex Ovechkin stopped to talk to Auston Matthews, on his way to being generational. Their handshake and their talk lasted longer than most. He patted the young Leaf on the chest, spoke for a few seconds, and it was an unofficial passing of his goal-scorer’s torch.
A few minutes after that, Ovechkin, with a towel around his waist, went back to the Leafs dressing room. The Leafs and Matthews clearly left an impression on him.
“We gave the best team in the league all they could handle,” Matthews said.
What more could they do than that?