Maple Leafs out to show grit is not just about hits in today’s NHL

TORONTO — It was in the midst of a four-game losing streak in January that Mike Babcock was asked to explain his heavy reliance on the services of Leo Komarov.

The situation seemed curious to many observers. After all, Komarov, at the moment in question last National Hockey League season, ranked third among Toronto Maple Leafs forwards in time on ice, whilst ranking 10th in points.

So while Toronto’s roster was stacked with plenty of offensively gifted options, Komarov, the hard-hitting Finnish grinder who would finish the season with a paltry seven goals and 19 points, was being sent over the boards more frequently than the likes of Mitch Marner and William Nylander. The coach wanted to make it clear that, contrary to some theories, this wasn’t self-sabotage. This was well-thought-out strategy.

“This is what I like, (which may be) different than a lot of people,” Babcock said. “I believe you empower the people that do it right every day and work hard every day and set the example for people. … If you just empower the skill, pretty soon your team doesn’t play at all. That’s why we do it.”

When the Maple Leafs begin the most anticipated season in the post-expansion era on Wednesday, Babcock won’t have Komarov to employ as one of his internal paragons of doing it right. And Komarov, who signed as a free agent with the New York Islanders, isn’t the only Babcock favourite who’ll be playing elsewhere this season thanks to a roster rejig engineered by newly inserted general manager Kyle Dubas, whose vision of the game prioritizes skill above all. Defenceman Roman Polak, the bear of a Leafs penalty-killing staple, signed in Dallas. Matt Martin, the designated hitter whose star faded in last season’s second half, was traded to the Islanders in July. With that trio of throwback toughness out of town, Babcock was asked this week if his team will be lacking in the kind of physicality he has long espoused as essential.

“We’re going to find out,” the coach said. “We think we’ve done a lot with our team. We think our team has a chance to take a step. We’re going to have to (be physical) by committee, for sure.”

Which is not to say the team’s collective edge, or lack thereof, won’t be something Babcock is monitoring.

“The beauty about the season and what’s coming is that we’re just going to go about it daily. And if we need to tweak our lineup over time, then we’ll find a way to get that done,” Babcock said.

“But I’m not going to Kyle every day and saying, ‘We need one thing or another.’ Right now, not at all. I’m just watching us play,” he added.

Watching and, unless Dubas has been wholly successful in transforming Babcock’s view of the game, possibly observing a void when it comes to players in the Komarov-Polak mould. Not that the Maple Leafs don’t have their share of example-setting, whatever-it-takes worker bees who’ve shown themselves to be fearless in their self-sacrifice in the tough areas. Zach Hyman, who missed Wednesday’s preseason game in Montreal with a hip pointer, is still around. Ditto Connor Brown.

And, even if both of those players are better known for absorbing punishment than doling it out to opponents, maybe it doesn’t matter. Certainly there are those, Dubas among them, who would point out that success in today’s NHL is more about playing quickly and cleverly than playing with overtly menacing force.

“The game’s quicker now. There’s more skill involved. That physical aspect of it hasn’t been completely weeded out at all. But it’s become less of a focal point,” said defender Morgan Rielly. “Grit, I don’t know what it is in the dictionary. But when you look at how hard John Tavares works and how hard Auston Matthews works, and grit from (Nikita Zaitsev) and (Ron) Hainsey — we have lots of it. Hard work and commitment to doing whatever it takes to win, and making sacrifices, it can come in all different shapes and forms.”

There’s a particular form, though, that Toronto lacks. Maybe the prototype of the moment is Tom Wilson, the Toronto-raised Washington Capitals grinder who spent part of the summer signing a six-year deal worth US$31 million. Wilson will never be mistaken for an uber-skilled offensive machine; he’s mostly infamous for consistently doling out suspendible hits. But the reigning Stanley Cup champions are of the belief that there’s still a place in the game for Wilson’s punishing presence, never mind that he has put up an annual average of about nine goals and 21 points in five NHL seasons. It’s hard to argue that Wilson wasn’t indispensable in the mad wrestle-fest of the playoffs, when he logged top-six minutes while piling up 15 points in 21 games.

The Maple Leafs, stocked with a long list of highly skilled players who mostly prefer dodging collisions to initiating them, employ no comparable menace. But more than a few of them scoff at the notion it’ll be a liability.

“Nick Lidstrom is arguably the best (defenceman) of my generation of watching. And he didn’t hit a whole lot at all. And then you look at (Erik) Karlsson, he’s the same way,” said Rielly. “I think you still have to be physical. But there’s a difference between being physical and making huge hits consistently … Positioning outweighs hitting, basically. But like I said, you still have to be physical. That comes in different shapes and forms when you’re battling in front of the net. That’s arguably the most gritty area as a D-man that you want to be able to play in, but you don’t get credit for hits. In the corner, you might get one hit in and then you have to battle for another 20 seconds. It’s not about hitting as much as it’s about being physical with your stick and with your opponents. Those are the important battles.”

Said Patrick Marleau, the veteran forward: “Physicality, you can look at it a bunch of different ways. Laying a guy out is one way. Obviously guys can do that. But what we have as a team, guys with quick sticks who put their body in the right place to shield the puck — that’s physical. That’s being hard for other teams to play against. When you say ‘physicality,’ everybody thinks about big hits. But it’s changed. You’ll still see it. But I don’t know how much that’s going to play a factor throughout the year.”

If physicality is in the eye of the beholder, it’ll be worth monitoring how Babcock sees it as the season grinds along.