Who these Leafs will be is anyone’s guess
It was a year ago the Maple Leafs began preparations for the season with their camp aflame in controversy.
A couple of anonymous minor hockey coaches told this newspaper that assistant coach Steve Spott, during a session at a hockey symposium, had made disparaging comments concerning the coachability of Phil Kessel.
Poof! Just like that; major conflagration. All involved tried to play down the story, but it stuck, and it festered. What followed was one odd incident after another — Salutegate, Nazem Kadri’s suspension, etc. — and the season careered from disappointing to embarrassing
Fast forward 12 months, and Kessel isn’t even a Leaf anymore, Spott’s not on the coaching staff and camp is smoothly underway. With nononsense Lou Lamoriello watching from on high and Mike Babcock preaching professionalism and preparedness from ice level, few would anticipate this season unfolding in the same manner.
The change appears so dramatic, so very different, that one wonders if Kessel had stayed whether he would have bought in the way he already has seemingly bought into being a Pittsburgh Penguin. Instead, we’re left to marvel from afar as the scoring winger makes the kind of commitment to fitness and nutrition he declined to make in Toronto.
That’s a comment on him, but also on the Leaf organization, which couldn’t persuade him to buy in and accept responsibility in the way the Penguins obviously have, to go beyond being one of the best pure goal-scorers the team has ever employed.
Apparently the prospect of playing the wing beside Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin can inspire a fellow, and so far the Kessel narrative in Steeltown is completely different.
In Toronto, meanwhile, the team has brought in a host of players unwanted elsewhere (or anywhere) on either one-year contracts or professional tryout deals. The list is long and intriguing, and includes Curtis Glencross, Brad Boyes, Devin Setoguchi, Mark Arcobello, P.A. Parenteau and others.
Instead of having a star player seemingly reluctant to embrace either leadership or the team concept, or at least ambivalent about it, there’s the sense Leaf camp is filled with players dying to impress Babcock and Lamoriello, of players hungry and desperate to earn a contract or stay in the NHL. Even talented but undrafted juniors like Michael Joly and Nikolas Brouil- liard are here trying to earn an AHL contract, players who stood out at last spring’s Memorial Cup tournament for Rimouski and Quebec, respectively, but now have to find someone willing to hire them.
Yes, the team is about youth, but also about creating a larger sense that this is a team people want to play for and about now as much as the future. So five solid-to-middling prospects were packaged off to Brooklyn on Thursday to bring in another veteran, winger Michael Grabner, who is in the last year of his contract and should be hugely motivated to make sure he doesn’t end up in the same situation Glen- cross, Boyes and Setoguchi have found themselves.
Even with veterans like Dion Phaneuf, Joffrey Lupul and Kadri, there’s a palpable sense that this could be their last season in Toronto unless they can demonstrate to the team’s braintrust they deserve and want to be Leafs.
It does make you wonder what kind of a team is being organized for this season. Rather than stripping it down and doing a scorched earth rebuild with nothing but kids in the same manner as the Edmonton Oilers, it sure looks like Toronto is aiming to win many more hockey games this season than they did last.
How this progresses, well, we’ll see. But look at the roster. The team has two veteran goalies and a group of experienced defencemen that includes Phaneuf, Jake Gardiner, Morgan Rielly and Roman Polak.
Up front, there is much more veteran know-how available than would normally be the case with a team determined to tank like the Buffalo Sabres did last season, or even in the same way Leaf management didn’t lift a finger to stop last year’s second-half collapse from turning into a runaway train.
They wanted that top draft pick and they got it, adding talented centre Mitch Marner to their improving depth chart of young players. But right now this sure doesn’t look like an attempt to land Auston Matthews next June — Arizona seems to on track for that — so what is this exactly? Why are the Leafs a team trading five kids for an expiring contract?
It is a bit of a puzzle, with the only obvious possible answer being that with Babcock behind the bench, the Leafs are a team gunning for a postseason berth. Don’t laugh. Seriously, don’t laugh. The bar’s been set incredibly low, with Babcock talking about pain and more pain. Any kind of positive performance is going to be viewed as a pleasant surprise, and if Babcock were to actually guide the team to the post-season, he might finally haul in that elusive coach of the year award.
This camp is about hunger and impressing the new bosses. We’ve heard about establishing “new cultures” ad nauseam for years, so of course we must wait to see if this is for real.
We understand what the overall plan is. But the immediate intent for this season remains murky.
Damien Cox is a broadcaster with Rogers Sportsnet and a regular contributor to Hockey Night in Canada. He spent nearly 30 years covering a variety of sports for the Star, and his column will appear here Saturdays. Follow him @DamoSpin.