Freddie Andersen has a short memory — and that’s a good thing for a goalie.
Frederik Andersen hasn’t watched the tape. Not once. He doubts he ever will.
There’s no point in looking back, he says. This year is about this year. It’s new. It’s fresh. The last period Andersen played for the Maple Leafs, the last period all of the Leafs played, is best left behind. Holding a third-period lead, the Leafs lost Game 7 to the Boston Bruins, allowed four third-period goals, three of them on Andersen.
“You can’t take it back,” said Andersen, explaining his ways as the Leafs’ No. 1 goaltender. “You’ve got to work toward how are you going to stop the next one. I think that’s important for a goalie and for a player, to be able to park that stuff behind you. That’s going to be important in a long season, with a lot of ups and downs.
“I haven’t watched any video (of Game 7). I think we’re refocusing here on working on my game and making sure the next (game) is the best one.”
Not all goalies are the same. Some can’t wait to get to the dressing room after giving up a goal, especially a bad one, wanting to see what happened, how it happened, how he could have handled it differently. And so many goalies succeed best with hockey amnesia. What happened yesterday was yesterday, it’s not a learning tool, it’s a chance to move on.
The Leafs, talented as they are, will only go as far as Andersen takes them. That’s an NHL constant. Nashville lost in the playoffs when Pekka Rinne stopped making saves of consequence. Winnipeg lost after Connor Hellebuyck let in some uncharacteristic goals. Vegas played for the Cup partly because of the brilliance and leadership of Marc-Andre Fleury and Washington won the Cup as Braden Holtby left behind a less-than-average regular season for his near spectacular playoff run.
This is season three for Andersen in Toronto. He has been great and average and terrific and flawed and MVPlike, everything most goaltenders in the top third of the league go through. The next step for Andersen is a great playoff run. If it happens, that will begin in April. Until then, the job as starter is his, and there is much to work, incremental as it may be, to do with this ever-improving Maple Leafs team.
Like Andersen, coach Mike Babcock hasn’t spent much time dissecting the tape of Game 7 against Boston, but he has broken down some pertinent plays, because that’s what Babcock does on a regular basis. What bothers Babcock about last year’s brief playoff run is this: The Leafs didn’t really show up for Game 1 and 2 against Boston. Either they weren’t ready or they played as if they weren’t ready. That meant the series was played entirely in catchup mode and yet with one period to go in Game 7, they had more than caught up. They were ahead by a goal.
But Babcock points this out: The Bruins, who beat the Leafs, went out next round. The Lightning, who beat the Bruins, went out the following round. That alone gives Babcock a platform for pushing and prodding as this season begins. Talent doesn’t mean anything if it’s not accompanied by winning.
Part of the Babcock platform meant a trip to the World Hockey Championship in Denmark last May, and with that a personal meeting arranged with Andersen and his parents at their home.
The Andersen folks took a couple of hours off work that day, made sure the coffee was hot and the danishes — how’s that for a cliché — were fresh for Babcock. “It was cool,” said Andersen of the meeting, part of the new world thinking for NHL coaches. It was never part of Punch Imlach’s repertoire to hang with Eddie Shack in the summers or the off-season and not exactly what Pat Burns meant when he sat down with Doug Gilmour for the first time, which was at a downtown strip joint. This was in Andersen’s home, with mom and dad and baked goods.
This is the new Babcock, who years ago had a personal rule of never talking to parents. Now he’s become a professional glad-hander. One month he’s in Arizona meeting with Auston Matthews and folks and then in Denmark with the Andersens, adapting with these millennial times. “It was a chance,” said Andersen, “to get to know each other better.”
Before training camp began, Andersen and the three other goalies competing for the backup spot behind him, went to see Making Coco, the documentary on the life and times of Hall of Fame goaltender Grant Fuhr and he was personally inspired by it. He was inspired by how many games Fuhr played in a season, 79 one season, and how many times he was called upon to win games in the third period.
He wants to be more like Fuhr in that regard. Doesn’t matter the score: It matters when you make the big save. It matters that you win and that your teammates trust you to win.
Grant Fuhr probably wouldn’t have watched the tape of Game 7 either. Tomorrow matters. Yesterday, for Frederik Andersen, is already old news.
YOU’VE GOT TO WORK TOWARD HOW ARE YOU GOING TO STOP THE NEXT ONE.