A straight line? The Leafs aren’t about to surprise other teams this season,
Leafs expect to improve but they know they won’t be catching teams by surprise
The Maple Leafs will be good . . . The Maple Leafs will be great . . . The Maple Leafs will make the playoffs . . . The Maple Leafs are a contender for the Stanley Cup . . . The Maple Leafs will win the Stan . . . Hold on. Stop right there. It sure has been some time since the Maple Leafs were considered Stanley Cup contenders, probably back to the early 2000s, the heyday of a free-spending team before the salary-cap era.
The Maple Leafs are one of the last teams to have figured out that building through the draft is essential. And they’re proof — the Edmonton Oilers stand as another example — that getting lucky in the lottery era might be even more important.
Nonetheless, they delivered on the goods last season — a surprise playoff appearance that belied the pain head coach Mike Babcock had promised — hence the reason for all the optimism as the curtain rises Wednesday night for the team’s 101st NHL season.
But what if something goes wrong? What if Frederik Andersen or Auston Matthews get hurt? What if Mitch Marner and William Nylander take a step back? What if Nazem Kadri and Tyler Bozak fail to build off big years? What if Patrick Marleau starts acting his age? What if the holes on defence get bigger?
What if Tampa Bay, Florida, Buffalo and Carolina all make the predicted leaps forward and the Leafs get stuck in neutral?
What if the Leafs — and this has been a problem historically for this franchise — think they’re better than they really are, taking success for granted? What if we see the return of Blue and White disease?
“That’s the complacency factor,” Kadri says. “You think because you’ve had some success that things are going to be given to you and you don’t have to work near as hard for them. The guys in here, we’re heading in the right direction, we’ve earned a little respect, but we’ve still got lots of work to do.
“We didn’t go 82-0 last year. We still have improvements to make, things we can perfect.”
If the Maple Leafs drop back this year, they certainly won’t be the first young team to make a leap forward one year only to stub their toe the next.
Guy Boucher, now the head coach of the Ottawa Senators, had that happen to him with Tampa Bay. His Steven Stamkos-powered team of 201011 made the third round of the playoffs — Boucher’s first year as coach — and failed make if back to the postseason a year later.
“Everyone has that experience. You think you’re there,” Boucher said. “When you start the year, you think you’re back at the end of the year. And you’re not. You’re absolutely not.
“You think you’re better than you are when the opponent is going to be hungrier. Teams are coming in guilty and hungry because they didn’t make the playoffs. They have new enthusiasms. There are so many things that come into play starting a year that the minute you step back and think you are what you were at the end of a hard long process last year, you’re done.” Tough words. And a lot to digest. But it happens year after year. Think of the Florida Panthers, or the Dallas Stars, or the Colorado Avalanche. All have made the playoffs in recent years only to disappoint themselves and their fans the next season.
Even Maple Leafs of a certain age — Kadri, Tyler Bozak, James van Riemsdyk, Leo Komarov and Jake Gardiner among them — can draw on their own experience from that 2013 first-round playoff loss to Boston, one that saw Toronto take a 4-1 lead in the third period of Game 7 before the Bruins rallied back to force overtime and escape with a victory.
It was a disappointing finish. OK, it was a heartbreaking finish. But the 2013-14 Leafs thought they were better and thought they were bound for the playoffs. And they looked like they were locks — until a 2-12-0 finish to the regular season.
“Any time you make the playoffs, you’re excited for the next season,” Gardiner says. “You always think it’s going to be better than the last one. Then to go and have a bad season was tough. It reversed the thought process. It wasn’t a great feeling.”
So what do they do to make sure they don’t repeat that ugly history? For one, they believe in the makeup of the team and its mental toughness.
“We’ve got a lot of young guys, and they’re going to improve,” Bozak says. “You never know what’s going to happen. But we’re confident. We believe in ourselves. We have a good coaching staff and people to hold us accountable.”
They also believe they’ve learned from past mistakes.
“We know we all start at the same level and we all start at ground zero. Every team,” van Riemsdyk says. “We just have to have that same desperation and hunger to get points as a team and win games and all that good stuff.”
Make no mistake, the Leafs now play with targets on their backs. Last in 2015-16, they might have surprised a few teams last year. That won’t happen this season.
“Teams are going to play us harder,” Bozak says.
“Teams thought it was going to be a little bit easier playing against us. Now teams are taking us a lot more seriously. This year, that’s going to happen.
“It’s not going to be any easier, it’s only going to get tougher.”