Leafs can offer hope
Two years ago, the Maple Leafs got down on their knees and begged Steven Stamkos to join them. They tried to lure him away from a more promising opportunity to win a Stanley Cup in Tampa Bay, and in the end, were unsuccessful in their attempts.
That’s part of why their courtship of John Tavares, however long it lasts, is a different deal entirely. The expectation is that, like Stamkos and like John Carlson this past weekend, Tavares will ultimately choose to stay put. But he wants to go through the process, and Toronto apparently is intent on making a pitch along with Dallas, San Jose, Tampa Bay and Boston.
The Leafs were willing to make Stamkos impossibly rich both with his contract and all kinds of off-ice opportunities. They would have made him the biggest athletic star in this city and, quite probably, the captain of the Leafs. He would have been the local lad coming home to rescue the home team. Given that they were 30th in a 30-team league at the time, the Leafs had to hope Stamkos would want all those things more than winning and his familiar Florida surroundings. But he didn’t. With Tavares, the process will take a very different arc. For starters, the Leafs can offer a better chance in the near future to win a Cup than Tavares currently has on Long Island. The Leafs were seventh overall last season and lost a tough Game 7 to Boston. You can argue about how close Toronto is to actually winning, but they’re clearly one of the up-and-coming teams in hockey with excellent coaching, good goaltending, a burgeoning superstar in Auston Matthews and an impressive young core.
The team is also stable. Ownership is rock solid. Brendan Shanahan has proven himself to be a visionary and the transition from Lou Lamoriello to Kyle Dubas has been seamless. At the draft last weekend in Dallas, it was as if the Leafs under Dubas were simply continuing down the same path they’d been on for three years, not swerving to accommodate a new vision and new agenda.
Some fans may believe the Leafs were too small and not aggressive enough, and that’s what cost them in the playoffs. Understand this: Dubas doesn’t agree. This is a hockey team that has been redesigned to be all about skill and speed, not size and muscle. The Leafs don’t hit much, and they don’t get hit much. They want games to come down to smarts, disciplined creativity and stick skills, and for the most part they were successful at that last season.
Losing to the Bruins convinced some that approach caught up with the Leafs in the end. Maybe, but it was almost certainly more about the fact this was still a very young, inexperienced team, a team still learning how to win.
The toughest thing after a loss like that is to stick to the plan. By anointing Dubas as Lamoriello’s successor, Shanahan indicated he does not want the Leafs to deviate from the path they have been on.
Two weeks ago, the AHL Marlies won the Calder Cup led by players likely to get a shot with the parent club in the very near future. At the draft, Dubas traded down to get extra picks, something he’d done three years earlier, and the Leafs again focused on smaller, skilled players to such an extent you wondered if they even consider players taller than six-feet anymore.
from It’s unclear whether returning to his childhood stomping grounds will appeal to Tavares
What does this mean to Tavares? He knows exactly what the Leafs are about. He understands who is in charge, the philosophy in play and can see the stability that has been established.
It’s no longer the gigantic leap of faith it would have been for Stamkos.
The Islanders, by hiring Lamoriello and Barry Trotz, have dramatically upgraded their organization in the front office and behind the bench. But this is still a notoriously unstable organization and a team with no permanent home.
As a team, the Islanders have some good pieces. Anders Lee. Johnny Boychuk. Matt Barzal. Josh Bailey. Jordan Eberle.
But they have a limited payroll, no goaltending and no immediate prospect to get a No. 1 netminder with Philipp Grubauer having gone to Colorado. They were an 80-point team that allowed more goals than any team in the NHL last season. They’ve got lots of work to do.
So the Leafs can offer stability, a vision and a better team, things they couldn’t offer Stamkos two years ago when they basically had Mike Babcock to offer and not much else.
It’s unclear whether returning to his childhood stomping grounds will appeal to Tavares. It obviously didn’t appeal enough to Stamkos. But the Leafs have quite a few local lads now — Mitch Marner, Connor Brown, Zach Hyman, Travis Dermott — and have managed to erase the long-held myth that it’s too uncomfortable for Toronto-area players to play for the Leafs. Two summers ago, Stamkos would have been the marquee player. Matthews, after all, had just been drafted, and the Leafs didn’t even know if Marner and William Nylander would even be able to crack the roster for the 2016-17 season. Phil Kessel had been traded a year earlier, and Dion Phaneuf had been sent to Ottawa four months earlier. The roster was a clean slate.
Tavares would obviously also be a high-profile player, but he wouldn’t be the unquestioned star or even the best player. The top centre role would be shared with Matthews, and Nazem Kadri would also be in need of significant minutes. Tavares could theoretically be the captain, but not necessarily. After being the top dog on Long Island for nine years, he would be one of a number of elite forwards with the Leafs.
If he thinks like Kyrie Irving, if he yearns to be The Man, that won’t appeal to him. If he is looking for talented teammates to play with, it might.
Again, the general consensus seems to be Tavares will stay put. He seems to have a loyalty to that organization that supersedes what the organization has done for him.
But if he wants all that the Leafs have to offer, this is his chance.
If he wants to play in the world’s biggest market not far from his hometown on a strong Original Six team that could soon be reaching for a Cup, this is his chance.
If he doesn’t want those things, he’ll have other choices.
The Leafs don’t need him as badly as they believed they wanted Stamkos.
Being less needy might just make them more attractive.