National Hockey League playoff roundup

Defenceman made impressive playoff debut against Caps, but is far from satisfied

Morgan Rielly couldn’t sleep. His television was showing the end of the Calgary-Anaheim game. His mind was still racing. He wasn’t really paying attention to the noise and colour in front of him.

He was trying to relax after playing in the first NHL playoff game of his career, and how great that felt, and how stunning the ending was, and how many directions his thoughts were taking him.

This isn’t something he does very well — wind down after games. He replays the game in his head. Then he does it again. This is Rielly on game nights. But this wasn’t any ordinary game night — for him and for so many of the young Toronto Maple Leafs.

This was something he has waited his entire life for. Playoffs. An explosion for a racing mind.

On Thursday, Rielly stepped up the way you’re supposed to step up at playoff time. He elevated his game. He played what his coach called his best game of the season. This has not been an easy season for Rielly, who has watched this impressive array of rookies find their place as he has struggled to take the next step.

But inside his dressing room, inside Leaf land, there is a special place for him as part kid, part veteran, part leader, part restaurant picker.

“The backbone of our team,” Connor Brown called him.

The backbone turned 23 last month. That makes him old and experienced around here, but so young as a defenceman in the NHL. His maturity is apparent, and in his first playoff game, against the very experienced Washington Capitals, he played 24 minutes, 24 seconds, more ice time than any Washington player except Matt Niskanen, who played 12 seconds more.

He wasn’t sure if it was his best game of the season, although he appreciated the compliment from coach Mike Babcock. He knows what this time of the year means, for himself, for his team, for his city, for a player’s reputation.

Playoffs define players. You want to be a playoff performer. You want to be a big-game player. You want to be known for that.

Rielly’s never had humble ambitions. He wants to be elite. He thinks about the game all the time. Not all players care so much about themselves or their teams. He thinks about how he can get better. He thinks about what makes him occasionally great and how he can get to that level all the time.

“For me, I want to limit the chances against. Once you take care of your own end, you want to skate and get into the rush,” he said.

That’s his game. With the puck. That’s where he can be a difference-maker. The Maple Leafs defence has been a target all season. They are hardly ideal. Rielly’s close friend Jake Gardiner led in ice time in Game 1. Rielly was second. The two leading the Leafs, the way they’ve always envisioned it.

This is just a start for Rielly and for the Leafs. A beginning. Where this road ends, no one can be sure, this season and the seasons that follow. But to see Rielly against the best team in the NHL, playing his game, thinking the game — and that’s so much of what separates the great defencemen — erases the problems of a month or more ago.

It was just one night for him, just one step for the Leafs. They won the first half of the game, lost the second half. What happens in Game 2? The first half or the second half?

“Tomorrow night,” Rielly said, “I want to be much better.”

Occasionally he touches his face. Playoff faces are a hockey tradition. They are bumped and bruised and stitched and marked and the closer it gets to the presentation of the Stanley Cup, the worse most players look, never mind those gawdawful beards. Before he played a game, Rielly had a playoff face.

There are marks on the right side, too close to the eye for his liking, and there are red blotches on his nose, courtesy of the Buffalo Sabres and his own visor. A few days from now, he will probably own even more of a playoff face. The Capitals play a hard game. They hit hard.

That isn’t Rielly’s game nor is it necessarily his style. All of this is about growing and learning. And if you win a few games along the way, even better.

As his mind raced and the television in his hotel room blared, he couldn’t help but think about Game 1, over and over: What if?

There’s no time to think that anymore. There’s Game 2 to play.