First-place Leafs look like real contenders
We’re all still trying to figure out exactly what to make of this NHL season.
For starters, how can it officially be called the 2020-21 season when all the games are being played in 2021? Isn’t it just the ’21 season?
Inquiring minds want to know. Also, how can an Art Ross Trophy winner be named at the conclusion of this season when all teams are playing against approximately one-quarter of the league? Shouldn’t there really be four separate scoring champions?
Are we wrong, or does it seem as though the seven Canadian clubs are having rather more good fortune combating COVID-19? Dallas, Florida, Carolina, Washington and Vegas have all been impacted to various extents. Up here in Canada? Nothing major so far.
What we also know is that the Maple Leafs, a franchise revitalized by Brendan Shanahan’s vision but still far from the promised land, have started the season looking very comfortable as a member of hockey’s Group of Seven. A 7-2 start has the Leafs in first place in the North Division, a position they were rarely able to even approach in recent years while a member of the currently mothballed Atlantic Division.
It certainly appears that playing Tampa Bay and Boston less while seeing the likes of Edmonton and Calgary more agrees with the Leafs. Over the past week, the Leafs became the first team in hockey history to play three consecutive road games in Alberta and win all three, a neat little historical footnote.
The team looks better than it did last summer in a brief playoff appearance against Columbus, and better than it did when COVID forced the NHL to suspend operations last March. The Leafs also look much better than they did at the beginning of the 2019-20 season when their struggles were so troubling to Shanahan that he approved the deep-sixing of head coach Mike Babcock.
Through all of these ups and downs, the Leafs have emerged with a team
that no longer looks like a bunch of kids trying to figure it all out. They just don’t reek of youth in the same way they used to. Granted, they’re winning, which helps appearances, but the fellows in blue and white now look like a smart, professional team with a coherent game plan, albeit one that is still different than that of most clubs.
It certainly appears as if GM Kyle Dubas, who as recently as October, 2019, left Babcock without a backup goalie or players of any discernible grit, has done a much better job of providing complementary pieces for Sheldon Keefe, who can only dream of one day being able to coach an entire 82-game NHL season from beginning to end.
Nine games into a shortened 56-game schedule, Dubas’s additions are all contributing. Wayne Simmonds has scored in three straight games for the first time since 2017 and is a player who actually instills a bit of physical fear in the opposition. Zach Bogosian looked too slow in his opening matches with the Leafs, but has gradually fit with the pace of this team. Like Simmonds, he’s added a streak of mean to Toronto. He spent the final moments of Thursday’s game terrorizing 153-pound Kailer Yamamoto of the Oilers, which won’t win Bogosian the Lady Byng but will garner much approval from certain quadrants of Leafs Nation.
From what we’ve seen, T.J. Brodie is an upgrade on Tyson Barrie, who has already been a healthy scratch in Edmonton. Jimmy Vesey is still finding where he fits, as is Joe Thornton, who is out with an injury for the next while.
Even players added last year are providing more value. Jack Campbell had a couple of wins before being injured. Jason Spezza has become somewhat of a specialist, used to win faceoffs and provide some depth on the power-play unit. He’s making more sense as a Leaf now than he ever did last season.
Montreal, at 5-0-2, is second in the North behind the Leafs, and Marc Bergevin is getting lots of credit for bringing in Josh Anderson, Tyler Toffoli, Corey Perry, Joel Edmundson and backup goalie Jake Allen, and rightly so. Dubas, however, has augmented his roster just as effectively, perhaps implementing some of the hard lessons he has learned during the early days of his work as an NHL general manager.
Right now, it’s hard to assess which of the four NHL divisions is the strongest or the weakest.
The North has only three teams with winning records, and Ottawa looks like it will be a useful punching bag for the other six clubs all season. They were on high alert in Vancouver before the Senators came to town and scored only three goals in three games while giving up 16 to the previously troubled Canucks.
But it really doesn’t matter how the North stacks up, does it? All that matters is winning the division and gaining a berth as one of the final four. So while it’s difficult to assess whether the Leafs are as good as the Capitals, Bruins, Stars, Golden Knights or Avalanche, let alone the defending champion Lightning, that issue can wait until the early summer.
With a nasty power play that has scored 13 times in the last nine games, the Leafs are making themselves less vulnerable against teams who try to bully them. They’re also no longer one of the younger teams in the league. They’ve handed that mantle over to teams like the Rangers, Devils and Kings.
It sure looks like the Leafs are mature enough to seriously contend, and perhaps Dubas has found the right mix this season. These are early days, for sure, but this season is so short that early days will quickly turn into the home stretch.
Might as well win games now.