Feels like the first time — best is yet to come
Different thrills ahead after budding club’s heart-pounding playoff run
Some will claim they knew it all along. Others insist they saw it coming, as if with oracle eyes.
The metamorphosis of the Toronto Maple Leafs: From dead last in the NHL to playoffs the next season, which no team had pulled off in a decade.
And, oh yeah, extending the first round of the post-season to six games, each decided by one goal, against the league colossus Capitals in what was a scrappy, vibrant, oft-delirious wrangle of — dare we say it — near-equals.
In the compressed milieu of hockey’s Second Season, even a cat can gaze on a king, depending on how the puck bounces.
Nine rookies in the lineup who, in concert with their wizened teammates — though not by much — have rejuvenated a laughingstock franchise, in its centenary, seizing a hockey-maddened city by the heart.
That wasn’t remotely diminished by the outcome at the Air Canada Centre on Sunday night.
A team built to pay off in the near-future quick-marched towards . . . wow.
From the moment the balls bounced in Brendan Shanahan’s favour at the draft lottery 359 days ago, with Auston Matthews the shiny prize, Toronto’s fortunes have been upward-swooshing. From a training camp where coach Mike Bab- cock was unsure if 170-pound teenager Mitch Marner could make the roster cut, to the scrunch of a playoff slot clinched only on the very last weekend of the regular season, these Leafs have been bang for the entertainment buck.
And the best part is that the best part is yet to come. We’ll never again have the sheer incredulity of 2016-17, the thrill of it, as a rookie cadre ventured into the unknown of a post-season. And we aren’t partying like it’s 1993 — 21 games in 42 nights — all over again. But surely different thrills lie straight ahead, once summer is out of the way.
Less dramatically, however; more incrementally.
Most notable about this team is that no shortcuts were attempted, which has been the bane of franchise regimes past. Under the Shanaplan, it was — with a couple of significant exceptions, such as the trade for Freddie Andersen — assembled from within, through drafting and prudence and patience. For nearly forever, the driving imperative around these parts was that Leaf Nation would not abide the long-game fix. So players who’d given the prime of themselves elsewhere were recruited at the trade deadline, too often at the expense of youth and draft picks. Even with core studs such as Mats Sundin and Doug Gilmour, those teams had a gerrymandered feel to them, a one-chance shot.
This group, as Babcock has emphasized repeatedly, is designed to contend and contend so that the playoffs are no longer a wistful destination, nor a fleeting experience, one step forward and two steps back.
In Matthews, the Leafs have a generational player and emerging superstar, the likes of which haven’t been seen in my hockey lifetime. No disrespect intended to The Big Swede or heart-and-soul Gilmour but they were always surrounded by a supporting cast of catch-as-catch-can quality.
The kids who so delighted — Matthews and Marner and William Nylander and Connor Brown and Zach Hyman etc. — aren’t going anywhere. Others rose to the challenge of a playoff bid because this was a team that found its mettle in the final month of the season, most especially after the wakeup 7-2 spanking laid on by Florida on March 14, amidst all that clucking about an off-day charter-boat cruise. The Leafs probably took more bonding benefit out of that stinker than the recreational excursion.
Other games come quickly to mind which presaged what these Leafs were so rapidly becoming: The Centennial Classic on New Year’s Day, against Babcock’s old Stanley Cup-winning outfit, now almost unrecognizable from its dynasty era, Toronto rallying after surrendering a late two-goal lead and Matthews winning it in overtime; Nazem Kadri’s commanding performance in Edmonton on Nov. 29, billed as Matthews versus Connor McDavid 2.0, except Kadri — burnishing his bona fides as a 200-foot player — was on McDavid like white on rice whilst also scoring his 10th goal, ultimately the winner; a poised performance in Columbus on March 22, against a club with aspirations of claiming the Presidents’ Trophy.
Franchise rookie records began toppling. And, it goes without saying, that historical four-goal NHL debut by Matthews in the season opener at Ottawa, despite Toronto losing in OT.
Against Washington, a defence that had been maligned found its footing, Morgan Rielly and Jake Gardiner in particular skating miles, with each barrel-housing the transition game, Gardiner blessedly free of the brain cramps that had for so long characterized his play. Nobody curdled on the big stage. OK, enough backwards savouring. The NHL is shape-shifting as recently prominent clubs sink and outliers bang on the door. The objective now is to elevate the roster without sacrificing any of its sturdy components.
Toronto will need to expose players in the Las Vegas expansion draft — likely including either Connor Carrick or Martin Marincin. (Reporters fervently hope it’s not Carrick, quote-magnet in that dressing room.)
With the salary of MIA Stephane Robidas and a handful of others coming off the books, Toronto will have oodles of cap space, which could permit the acquisition via trade or free agency of an upgrade to the James van Riemsdyk-Tyler Bozak-Marner line, which scrabbled at times in the playoffs.
Toronto has not been a particularly attractive destination for free agents, loath to insert themselves into a 24/7 media market. But Babcock et al have transformed the centre of the hockey universe into a far more alluring address.
Really, when things go right, there’s no greater place to play hockey.
Babcock, finest hockey coach on the planet, articulated the city’s come-hither seduction after Sunday’s elimination.
“If you’re not from Toronto and you come to Toronto, you have no idea how spectacular it is. From the … media coverage to the fan base and the love of the team, it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. If you’re a good player and you like winning, this is the best place you could ever play.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s fantastic. Now we’ve got to have a team to match that opportunity. That’s what we’re going to try to grow.”
Sowed this spring, harvested in years to come.