LEAFS COACH PLANTING SEEDS OF DOUBT
Babcock seems to be publicly laying blame for recent losses at general manager’s feet
I don’t know if there’s friction between Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock and general manager Kyle Dubas. If there is, it wouldn’t be the first time a coach and a GM didn’t see eye to eye. And it wouldn’t necessarily prevent the team from success.
Stan Bowman and Joel Quenneville reportedly didn’t like each other much when they worked together in Chicago. Yet they teamed up to win three Stanley Cups in a six-year span.
So it’s not troubling that Babcock and Dubas might not be best of buddies. What is troubling is with the playoffs only weeks away, they are now airing their dirty laundry for everyone to see.
A lot of this is on Babcock, who has repeatedly taken shots at management for not filling in the holes that have been popping up on the roster since the team basically stood pat at the trade deadline. First, the Leafs weren’t heavy enough. Then the backup goaltending wasn’t good enough. Now, with Jake Gardiner and Travis Dermott out with injuries, it’s a lack of depth.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe Dubas hasn’t done enough work around the edges to get this team to championship calibre.
But now that the Leafs are struggling, Babcock’s complaints sound like he’s planting the seeds in the event Toronto gets bounced in the first round of the playoffs for the third straight year.
That’s the doomsday scenario in the back of everyone’s mind. That’s the fear. That’s causing all this white noise.
If the Leafs fail to advance — and with four losses in the last five games heading into Wednesday night, they don’t look like a team capable of going on a lengthy run — there will be hell to pay. And everyone, from the players to the coaching staff to management, will be feeling it.
There won’t be a single excuse that causes fans to put away their pitchforks and torches.
As long as John Tavares, Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, Morgan Rielly and Frederik Andersen are healthy, the coach won’t get any sympathy for the so-called lack of depth. After all, the Bruins lost 74 man-games to injuries to Zdeno Chara, Patrice Bergeron, David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy this season and the team hasn’t missed a beat.
As for Dubas, he was initially praised for signing Tavares, Matthews and Nylander to long-term contracts. But if this core doesn’t overcome the other deficiencies on the roster, the bean counters will determine if it was money well spent.
Then there are the players. In a lot of ways, they are the cause of all the consternation. It’s one thing to get paid like a champion. It’s another thing to play like one.
If they do the latter, Babcock and Dubas might just go back to being frenemies.
TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT
Alex Ovechkin was two goals ■ away from reaching the 50-goal mark going into Wednesday’s game after he supposedly spent the entire summer doing nothing but keg stands with the Stanley Cup. Forget the Atkins or the keto diet. I’m following the Ovie liquid diet.
Three players (Nikita
■
Kucherov, Connor McDavid and Patrick Kane) have already passed the 100-point mark, which is the most in almost 10 years. But for all the talk about how offence has increased, no player is coming close to scoring 60 goals this year and only Ovechkin is on pace for 50. But, hey, assists are up!
I don’t know what should be
■ more troubling for Leafs fans: that the team has allowed 26 goals in the last five games or that Chara, who has fought three times in the last two months, will be matched up against Marner in the first round of the playoffs.
As for whether the Leafs should ■ have added toughness at the deadline, go and watch Chara’s recent fight against the Islanders’ Matt Martin and then ask yourself what difference having Wayne Simmonds in the lineup would make.
It’s officially spring. Someone
■ wake James Neal up. And while you’re at it, get Patrick Marleau out of bed.
HERE’S ONE FOR YOU
The scariest part about the
■
Lightning having already won the Presidents’ Trophy is Andrei Vasilevskiy can now rest up for the playoffs. Not that he needs to. After missing four weeks to injury in November and December, he had played in only 47 games this season before Wednesday, which is a magic number for success. In each of the last six years, the Stanley Cup-winning goalie has played less than 60 games. Only two (Braden Holtby in 2018 and Corey Crawford in 2015) played more than 50 games.
How important is it to have a
■ backup you can rely on? Consider that of the 20 goalies who have played the most games this year, only half are on playoff teams.
Anthony Cirelli won’t get many ■ votes for the Calder Trophy, but the 21-year-old Lightning rookie has 15 goals (including four game-winners) and 33 points, as well as a plus-25 rating, while playing third-line minutes this season. Not too shabby for a third-round pick.
FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH
The NHL keeps getting smaller. But is there such a thing as being too small? Cole Caufield will test that question in this year’s draft.
The five-foot-seven winger (he’s listed an inch shorter on some websites), who is about to break Auston Matthews’ single-season record for goals with the U.S. National Team Development Program, is a projected mid- to late-round pick mostly because of his lack of his size.
Then again, he’s about the same height as Chicago’s Alex DeBrincat, who after falling to 39th overall in 2016 has now scored the fourth-most goals and points among his draft class. mtraikos@postmedia.com twitter.com/Michael_Traikos