Maple Leafs will succeed on the basis of skill, not truculence
TORONTO — It was just five years ago that the Toronto Maple Leafs pushed out not one, but two enforcers on their fourth line. That was five years after Brian Burke infamously promised pugnacity, testosterone, truculence and belligerence. It was like watching a living museum, more than anything. It didn’t go great.
On Saturday night, the Leafs were getting drilled by the Boston Bruins who, when they’re going, make their rink feel like a gladiatorial thing, and Zach Hyman made a mistake. He was late forechecking, his legs unusually slow. Bruins defenceman Charlie McAvoy moved the puck behind the Bruins net, and only then did Hyman take an extra stride and rise up to hit an unsuspecting McAvoy in the chest. He flattened him. McAvoy was in his second game back after missing 19 with a concussion.
Hyman was suspended for two games, which is fine. He didn’t target the head but it was a predatory hit, and deserved supplemental discipline. Maybe it was frustration. Maybe he was trying to send a message to a physical division rival. Hyman wasn’t willing to say, either way.
“I mean, listen, everybody’s trying to do their job. I’m trying to do my job,” said Hyman on Monday. “I think that the play’s out there, I think everybody can interpret it the way they want to. I mean, divisional rival, and we play hard against them and they play hard against us. It’s hockey.”
“I just think he finished his check, unless you talked to him and he said he was frustrated,” said Leafs head coach Mike Babcock.
“He finished his check, obviously according to the league he was late, and we move on.”
Except it was a lesson. Hyman’s hit prompted an outbreak of good old-fashioned bad hits and retaliation: A guy named Chris Wager took a predatory run at Morgan Rielly and just missed a suspendible headshot. (David Backes ran around a little, too, but he’d have to catch somebody.) There were fights. It could have gotten ugly.
“We’re a type of team that will push back,” said Leafs centre Nazem Kadri. “I mean, we’re not going to go beat every single person up on the ice, but we’re definitely going to show that bite-back. And I think we’ve done a good job this year showing teams that we won’t be pushed around, no matter how hard you try, on the road or at home.”
As the Leafs figure out their upside, and the league tries to muck them up, the idea that this team can be pushed around surfaces now and again, and not always in good faith. Kadri is the Leaf most comfortable on the edge of physicality and instigation, though sometimes he spills over that edge.
But the rest of the roster is not built for that. Hyman is counted by Babcock as a Leaf who plays a heavy game, but he’s not a masher; he’s a wrestler whose job is to chase the puck like it owes him money. Some guys play the piano; some guys carry the piano. Even then, Hyman isn’t as physical as the departed Roman Polak, or Leo Komarov, Babcock favourites for their work ethic and their veteran grit, and who were among the first bodies thrown over the side when general manager Kyle Dubas got handed the keys to the car. In Sault Ste. Marie and with the Toronto Marlies, Dubas and coach Sheldon Kennedy emphasized skill, and identified smaller players with skill as historically undervalued.
So, yes, some teams will try to intimidate Toronto, or draw them into stupid stuff. And the Leafs can’t just stand there and take it, because, that’s hockey. But it’s not about being tough in the old way for Toronto. Auston Matthews isn’t going to start running people over. Neither is Rielly, or John Tavares, or just about anybody. Hyman showed that if the Leafs start messing around with extra junk, they’re not practised enough to be good at it, and next thing you know it’s a two-game suspension.
If the Leafs want to be tough, if they want what Tavares called “bite,” it’s going to come by competing. The Leafs came out flat against Detroit on Thursday, and didn’t hold up under the pressure Saturday. This team is skilled as hell, and sometimes it looks like they know it. Some nights they’re not great, and get by because they can create goals from nothing, and have a goaltender.
But, as the season goes on, they’re just going to have to compete at a higher level on a consistent basis. In San Jose, the Sharks were running after Kadri in retaliation for last year’s Joe Thornton beard harvesting, and once the Leafs settled down and just started skating, they were faster, and won.
“Grit comes in a lot of forms,” said winger Connor Brown, who will move up and play with Tavares and Mitch Marner in Hyman’s absence. “I think, for us, it’s important to work hard, put our work before our skill, and obviously we’ve got a lot of guys in here who can score, and you don’t want your work to take a back seat.”
Exactly. Fight for the puck, so you can do something with it. If the Leafs want to be tough, they will need to play like a team that isn’t as skilled as they are. Because that’s most of them, and they know it.