Will struggles bring strength?
Leafs need answers soon, and the Bruins await in the playoffs
Between aphorisms about life, Mike Babcock made it sound kind of simple, to be honest. It was two days after a t third confetti-ti-cannon-of-chaos loss in six days, and all of Babcock’s aphorisms involved adversity, and what to do when it hit.
Which Babcock needed, because it’s here.
So as the Toronto Maple Leafs’ storm rattled the windows, Babcock said, “I think what you want is you want a solution. Everybody in life, I don’t know about you, but I’m way better when I know what the answer is. If I know what the answer is then I can fix it. So we did that here today .… It’s been going on for a period of time that we’ve been giving up rush chances, so we just talked about it, gave a solution, and now we’ve got to solve the problem .” Well, thats hould it. The Leafs’ recent slip’ n’ slide is well-documented: Tampa Bay blew them out Monday, Chicago went up 5-0 and held on, Philadelphia went up 5-2 and got rolled, and the Ottawa Senators—a ramshackle operation if there ever was one, the hockey equivalent of that Hollywood Western set that falls down when the wind kicks up — put a licking on the Leafs on Saturday night. A lot of sad Senators fans probably woke up inthe park, still wearing party hats and goofygrins. And now there are 10 games left in the reg-ular season before the Leafs play the BostonBruins in the post-season for a second straight year, and while Boston lost three in a row recently they know ex-ttactly what they are, and what it takes.The Leafs are working on it.
“It’s a weird week, I think,” said goaltender Frederik Andersen, whose save percentage in March is .885, and whose save percentage this week was .774 before he sat out Saturday’s game in Ottawa. “It’s good, adversity is good, and once we get out of it I think we will be better off. So that’s a positive about it. As a team you never like being in a slump, or personally either. But as much as people can look negative at it, I think it’s going to benefit us once we clean things up and get back to playing our best hockey.”
Rush goals are an issue, sure, but it also feels like a lot of interwoven threads that suddenly came loose. The backup goalie lost to Ottawa Saturday and called for more emotion, more anger.
And Babcock hinted the Leafs don’t have as much organizational depth as they would like, and mentioned that other teams have done better with injuries and depth, which felt like a memo for GM Kyle Dubas, last seen rubbing his eyes behind his glasses in Ottawa. Dubas, meanwhile, retweeted a comic tweeted by Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey that showed a vast line of people following a sign that promised “Simple But Wrong” answers over a cliff, and a few following the path up a mountain that read, “Complex But Right.”
It probably wasn’t related. But they don’t always seem to be singing from the same songbook, the front office and the coach.
And it all takes place in the shadow of a gradually declining share of puck possession in the past two months for a team that allows a ton of shots, and a corresponding shrinkage of chances to score. Those can be overridden by red-hot offence and a saviour in goal. But those don’t always last. Frankly, last week felt like the worst-case scenario of these Leafs — the goaltender stumbling, the defence sagging, the weak points cracking, the forwards finding the net with ease so often that their habits can slide. It’s felt too easy for this team at times. It doesn’t now.
“I think if I can say anything, winning and scoring goals often can mask some mistakes, and it’s a good perfume that covers up some things that doesn’t smell too good,” said Andersen. “And that’s the way I think you come to realize at the end of the day you want to win, but sometimes you feel a lot better than you play. And vice versa. So that’s why we can’t hang our heads too much here, and work on details and get playing again. And get back to what we can do.”
He knows he needs to be better. But he knows his team has been leaking for a while now, too.
“I don’t know how it is, but I imagine once you don’t feel like it’s going for you maybe you overcomplicate things a little bit,” Andersen said. “Same with being a goalie, if you’re not seeing the puck you’ll either over-challenge the puck, or under(-challenge), you’ll be too deep or you have trouble finding your depth. And that’s just something you work through.”
So, 10 games left. Babcock seemed to imply the fix was simple, and maybe it is. Babcock and Andersen both said adversity is important in life, and that’s true, and now it means the Leafs are about to determine how this season is really going to go. Maybe they’re who they think they are. It’s entirely possible, still.
And if they aren’t ready at the right time then the Bruins will probably eat them, and then people will start apportioning blame. It might not be fair, sure. But that’s life for you.