The Capitals take the punishment
Mates say Marner’s demotion no big deal but Brown’s rise, Andersen’s performance are
WASHINGTON, D.C.— If you were attempting to invent a crisis to dampen the giddy, early success of this Maple Leafs season, maybe you could have turned the spotlight on Frederik Andersen. That is, maybe before Tuesday night. Before Andersen put in his best performance of the season — stopping all 30 shots directed his way in a 2-0 win over the Washington Capitals at the Verizon Center — you could have made a case that, despite his four wins in the previous five games, he hadn’t shown the stuff of a contender’s No. 1.
He was, after all, harbouring an unsightly save percentage of .880 — minorleague-level stuff, for sure.
He’d allowed 19 goals against, most in the league heading into Tuesday.
But Andersen said before Tuesday’s win that he wasn’t concerned with his out-of-the-gate numbers, that his selfanalysis suggested he was playing better than his stats suggested.
And sure enough, Tuesday’s rocksteady work against the reliably formida- ble Capitals helped Andersen’s save percentage jump from .880 to .899 — most likely en route to somewhere in the neighbourhood of his career average of .917.
“I’ve been feeling pretty well throughout the first (five) games, except it hasn’t felt like it’s been going my way,” Andersen said. “It’s nice to get a game like this.”
In other words, so much for that in- vented crisis, at least for now.
But don’t think Leafs head coach Mike Babcock won’t come up with more items to nitpick now that his young team has won five of its opening six games.
The latest came against the two-time defending Presidents’ Trophy-winning team that eliminated the Leafs from the playoffs in six games only about six months ago.
Between that loss and Tuesday’s win, mind you, the dynamic between the teams have taken a dramatic swing.
The Capitals, a year older and a few pieces weaker, spent the lead-up to Tuesday casting themselves as underdogs to the emergent Leafs. Washington coach Barry Trotz called Toronto “elite” and compared Auston Matthews to “a young Mario Lemieux.”
And even after the Capitals held Matthews to a relatively quiet night — pointless, with just a single shot on goal — they were pointing out that, if not for a big performance from goaltender Braden Holtby, Tuesday’s result could have been worse.
“Holts made some big saves. It could have been 3-0 right out of the get-go,” said Tom Wilson, the Toronto-bred Capital. “(The Leafs) came out flying. Holts made some huge saves, kept us in it, and their goalie played pretty well, too.”
Not that Babcock could nitpick much on Tuesday. The coach lauded the winning goal, scored by Connor Brown on a night Brown was promoted from the fourth line to play alongside Tyler Bozak and James van Riemsdyk, for its gritty timeliness. Nazem Kadri scored the other Toronto goal in the final minute with Holtby on the bench
“I thought we started real good. I thought we got a little carried away in the second period. But a good win for us. Big goal by Brown, obviously,” Babcock said.
And Babcock lauded, too, Mitch Marner, who swapped spots with Brown in a demotion that Babcock said was aimed at waking up a Bozak-centred line that had been far too lax on the defensive end.
“Mitch’s line with (Dominic) Moore and (Matt Martin), I thought they had a big night, too. I thought they played real good,” said Babcock.
Given that Marner played 12:49 — his lowest total as a Leaf save for last year’s game in Columbus in which he suffered a shoulder injury — it’ll be interesting to see how that big night is rewarded, or not.
Maybe Marner’s banishment to the bottom of the forward rotation was an invented crisis of sorts for a team in the midst of a wildly exciting beginning. There were players on the roster who greeted this week’s hubbub around Marner’s place on the depth chart with eye rolls and shakes of the head. In the lead-up to Tuesday’s game van Riemsdyk smiled broadly as he answered another in a line of questions on the topic, dropping an unsubtle hint that he was tired of the topic.
“I wish I had all these (media) guys on my side when I was coming into the league. It’s pretty funny. It’s one line switch,” said van Riemsdyk.
Marner, to be fair, isn’t just another player. For the opening two-thirds of last season he was leading all NHL rookies in scoring. If not for that shoulder injury suffered in Columbus, not to mention a lateseason run-in with mononucleosis, it’s wholly conceivable Marner would have outpaced a stellar field of first-year players in the rookie scoring race. And Marner did it while driving a line from the wing, helping both van Riemsdyk and Bozak to career years.
“I’ve never coached a kid that young that good before,” Babcock said of Marner back in December.
It wasn’t long after Babcock said those words that he was demoting Marner to the fourth line for part of a game against the Avalanche, a move Babcock acknowledged was a message to Marner about the importance of work ethic. Maybe prosperity and big-time potential demand those kinds of pre-emptive interventions.
Certainly Babcock tried to insert a few caveats into his general praise for his team on Tuesday night.
“Kind of got involved in their game, rushing up and down the ice, instead of maybe playing more heavy and on the cycle,” said the coach.
“Turned over a few too many pucks,” he added.
Still, he could only take the tsktsking so far. There’ll surely be more Leafland crises to come, invented or otherwise. But there was something to be said for enjoying a victory over a team that, not long ago, proved itself superior.
“It’s fun for us to come down here and get a little bit of revenge,” An- dersen said. “Obviously it doesn’t count as much (as a playoff-series win). But it’s something for the future.”