TIME TO GET BOLD
Lost Leafs can salvage pride, if not series, but Mike Babcock has to make tough calls
Nikita Zaitsev is in that cloudy uncomfortable place professional athletes find themselves in during unexplainable times.
He can’t make a putt. He can’t make a throw from second base to first. He can’t catch the football when he’s wide open downfield. He has the hockey yips.
Every decision he makes on the ice is wrong. And if it isn’t wrong, it seems to work out that way for the Maple Leafs.
Zaitsev is just one Toronto hockey player. He isn’t the reason the Leafs have been clobbered through two games of the first-round playoff series against the Boston Bruins. He just hasn’t helped a bit.
He was on the ice for all four first-period Boston goals Saturday night. One went off his skate. One happened because he failed to properly tie up a player on the penalty-kill. He’s off right now, the way so many of his teammates are off.
Roman Polak seems perpetually out of position. Ron Hainsey looks like he’s played too much hockey. Jake Gardiner is avoiding contact and corners, which is not what NHL defencemen of quality are supposed to do.
You can go through the Leafs lineup, player by player, line by line, pairing by pairing, and it’s almost impossible to find someone who is performing to expectations. It has been that imposing through two games against the Bruins and, in fairness, the Bruins, with their game plan, their style, their approach to playing the Leafs, have made this a one-sided series through two games.
And the options for coach Mike Babcock aren’t overly apparent, just as the matchups, even at home, without Nazem Kadri and his shutdown line, have a relatively deep Leafs team appearing pencil thin against the Bruins.
Whatever was supposed to happen through two playoff games has been basically a stripping down of what the Leafs cannot do — a kind of hockey autopsy before the body is even cold. But it’s only two games. And the Leafs haven’t played at home yet. And there’s still an opportunity to salvage their reputations. Not necessarily win the series, but not appear like a hockey doormat.
It starts Monday night and hopefully Babcock will be bold with his lineup choices, which isn’t necessarily his way. He needs to be a strength, something that hasn’t necessarily been evident through two defeats and two too many men on the ice penalties and a special teams mismatch.
If you’re Babcock, and you’re objective and you don’t believe in a player right now, bench him. If you have to go to the Marlies for players, bring them in. Leo Komarov is probably out by injury. Tomas Plekanec has done nothing for the Leafs in more than 20 games, so why continue with that failed experiment? Dominic Moore is a pro who will provide energy and intelligence.
Babcock will have to look seriously at continuing with Zaitsev and Polak, who have been part of the weak penalty-kill and have done nothing at even strength, and see whether Connor Carrick, who may be too small to play against the Bruins, is an upgrade. Or find out whomever Sheldon Keefe believes is most ready to help the Leafs from his Marlies defence.
This can’t just be a coaching determination now. There had to be heartfelt meetings Sunday between Brendan Shanahan, Lou Lamoriello, and his front-office voices, tense meetings, looking at where the Maple Leafs go from here in this series and beyond. The two games in Boston have been so horrendous that, at this point, they represent an absolute indictment of the organization, top to bottom.
The emperor, in this case the hockey club, has been shown to have no clothes. The team without a captain has no apparent leader to grab this group and drag it along with him. Maybe Auston Matthews will be that player when he gets older, more experienced, although on the list of Leafs problems in this series, he’s about as far down the list as any Leafs player.
It can’t be one player now. It has to be five, 10 players, 15 players. It has to be Frederik Andersen. It has to be Mitch Marner and William Nylander. It has to be Morgan Rielly, and yes, Matthews. That is the core.
The core forwards of the Bruins — Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak — has combined for a ridiculous 20 points in two games. The core defencemen — Charlie McAvoy and Torey Krug — have been quick and marvelous. The Bruins have been better-coached, better on special teams, better at even strength, tougher on the boards, more enthusiastic on loose pucks, stronger in goal, stronger around either net and by far the better passing and puck-moving team.
That’s an awful lot to overcome.
So, you have to start somewhere. You have to start with a lead in Game 3, which would be the Leafs’ first of the series. You have to score first. You have to bring the nervous and probably disappointed crowd into the game. You have to show that you care and that you’re not intimidated and that you’re damned embarrassed by what happened in the first two games.
If there is not time to win the series, there is time to salvage some reputation. The time begins Monday night.