Facing red-hot Blues should be a real test
One game can’t decide everything. One game before the NHL trade deadline shouldn’t completely decide what a team does or doesn’t do.
Given the measured manner in which the Maple Leafs’ front office has gone about its business this season, one doubts a single game would persuade GM Kyle Dubas to do anything. Still, Tuesday’s test in St. Louis against a rejuvenated Blues club that looked dead at U.S. Thanksgiving but is now the NHL’s hottest team looms as an important test before Monday’s trade deadline.
Whatever Dubas is thinking — and yes, we understand the entire media world has now decided another righthanded shooting defenceman is a must — the result of Tuesday’s game might confirm it, or make him shift his thinking a wee bit.
He has already seen his team skate through some intriguing tests this month — at home to Pittsburgh, on the road in Montreal and Las Vegas — and come through victorious. After St. Louis, he’s got two more regular-season games at home before the deadline to see his team play, Thursday against Washington and Saturday against the Canadiens.
So what makes the Blues game particularly interesting?
Well, there aren’t many successful teams defining themselves by superb defence these days, but that’s how St. Louis has put together 10 consecutive victories, suddenly injecting Craig Berube, who replaced Mike Yeo in late November, into coach-of-the-year conversations.
Nobody has scored on the Blues for the last three games. No team has had a lead on them for two weeks.
If there are playoff fears among Toronto’s fan base, they usually come in two specific areas. One, Freddie Andersen will again be inconsistent in the post-season. And two, a high-scoring Toronto team without enough determined bodies will be checked into the ground by a hard-nosed opponent, and won’t be able to check well enough itself to win a series.
So St. Louis comes as a very important test. The Blues have outscored their opponents 40-14 during this winning streak, and while mediocre special teams and all that weak play before Christmas might make one dismiss them as a team that will soon cool down, there are reasons to really like what’s going on in Missouri.
There is Berube, who had inconsistent results in his first opportunity as a head coach in Philadelphia but, like many coaches, seems to be much better in his second chance. He has St. Louis playing .625 hockey (the Blues were .472 under Yeo) and he has managed to get his best players playing at a much higher level.
Ryan O’Reilly, with 60 points, has been excellent and has helped Vladimir Tarasenko get on a roll. The line of O’Reilly, Tarasenko and Brayden Schenn was put together at the beginning of this winning streak, and it’s been averaging more than four points a game since. Tarasenko has 13 points in his last five games.
Alex Pietrangelo, speculated upon as a possible trade target for contending teams last fall, has his game back together. The St. Louis defence has scored 35 goals, second most in the league.
Finally, a sizzlingly hot goalie always helps, and one that comes from nowhere seems to create a unique energy. That’s certainly what seems to be happening with 25-year-old Jordan Binnington. The former Owen Sound Attack standout was drafted way back in 2011 and played 204 minorleague games in the St. Louis system before his call-up earlier this season.
Since then, he’s 12-1-1 and is stopping almost 94 per cent of the shots he is facing.
That has shot the Blues up to fifth best in the NHL as a defensive squad, and Berube’s team is suffocating the life out of enemy offences, allowing the second fewest shots on goals per game in the NHL.
Whether the Blues, now third in their division, can sustain this for the next two months and make the playoffs after missing last season is an open question. But we do know that no NHL team is hotter right now, which creates a good challenge for the Leafs, who couldn’t buy a goal on Darcy Kuemper in Arizona on Saturday and who were shut down by Rangers rookie Alexandar Georgiev (55 saves) the Sunday before that.
The Blues are also a great example of how you can look outside your organization all you want but the big improvement has to come from within. The Leafs, and all the other playoff contenders, can look around at the flashy names like Artemi Panarin, Matt Duchene, Gustav Nyqvist and Mark Stone that seem to be available before the trade deadline, but their playoff success is almost certainly going to be built on what they already have.
That was part of the logic of the Jake Muzzin deal for the Leafs. By the deadline, he’ll have already played 12 games in blue and white, with another 21 to go after that.
He’s already part of Mike Babcock’s group, although not yet partnered on a consistent basis with another Toronto blueliner.
The Leafs have their warts, the most significant being a teamwide lack of post-season experience. But they’re also still growing as a team, and could turn out to be the team that gets hot for two months and is still playing in June.
That team growth comes from facing tough challenges and succeeding. So count this game against the Blues Tuesday night as such a challenge.