Leafs can’t fret playoff matchups
Forget Bruins, just make it to post-season
The obsession with Boston is over.
Well, for now, at least.
At this time last year, the chances that the Toronto Maple Leafs would be playing the Bruins in the first round of the playoffs was so strong that Boston’s Brad Marchand had already begun to taunt his capstrapped future opponent with tweets that Toronto’s Mitch Marner “better be” paid US$ 12 million per year on his next deal.
“Oh man,” Leafs GM Kyle Dubas said at the time. “I think it was a master troll job, to say the least. You have to respect that element of it.”
This year, there’s no need for Marchand to troll the Leafs.
Boston isn’t thinking about playing Toronto. And the only thing on the Leafs’ collective minds is making the playoffs — something that isn’t nearly the guarantee as it was a year ago.
“Last year at this point, if you looked at it only in terms of probabilities, we were essentially going to be in ( the playoffs), barring something catastrophic,” Dubas said at the GM meetings on Tuesday. “This year, it’s been different in that it’s not a certainty whatsoever. As recently as a week ago — two weeks ago — our chances that we were going to make it weren’t great. So I think that’s forced us to have a different mindset than in past years.”
It’s a mindset that has become a lot more desperate.
Heading into Tuesday night’s game against the San Jose Sharks, the Leafs had won three straight games and held a five- point lead on the Florida Panthers for third place in the Atlantic Division. But they were still without Morgan Rielly, Cody Ceci and Jake Muzzin.
With three of their top four defencemen injured, the team has relied on a patchwork defence that has been cobbled together from the minors. So far, they’ve held down the fort, with Toronto picking up recent wins against Tampa Bay — who the Leafs would face if the season ended today — as well as Florida and Vancouver. But the season isn’t over just yet.
Dubas, who refused to add a defenceman at the trade deadline, acknowledged that the rest of the schedule will be a dogfight to get in. But he also heaped praise on a team that has come together in a big way to stay in the fight.
“A lot of them hadn’t played in these roles before,” he said of his young and inexperienced defence, “so as much as you have confidence in the development program and as much as you have confidence in them as people and players, until they actually go out and do it, you can project all you want. But it has been nice to see them step up and perform really well.
“More than the defence, it’s been the way that the team has played defence.”
OFFSIDE CHANGES COMING SON
On the second day of the GM meetings, league executives voted to amend the offside rule that previously required players’ skates to be touching the ice before crossing the blue line. Under the proposed change, which still needs to go through the competition committee and then be voted on by the board of governors in June, the skate can be in the air as long as it doesn’t cross the plane of the blue line.
According to the league, 14 goals would have been allowed in 1,005 games this year under the proposed rule.
HURICANES GET HELP IN NET
The Carolina Hurricanes, who lost both their starting and backup goalies in a game against Toronto last month, could be getting back Petr Mrazek in time for a final playoff push.
“Petr is going to be on the ice and travel with the team this week,” said GM Don Waddell. “He’s not ready to play yet, probably a week to 10 days away.”
The Hurricanes, who have lost three straight games since David Ayres stepped in as an emergency backup and led the team to a 6-3 win over the Leafs, are five points out of a wild-card spot in the East. But Waddell doesn’t blame goaltending for the team’s recent struggles.
“The other two guys have done a good job,” he said of Anton Forsberg and Alex Nedeljkovic. “Our team hasn’t played well. We’ve given up early leads and are chasing games, so I can’t blame that on the goalies.”