Leafs hope lost boys benefit from fresh start

New arrivals could help bottom of roster

There are no shortage of questions about the Toronto Maple Leafs as the shortened National Hockey League season begins Wednesday.

Begin with Joe Thornton, who is old and slow and wonderful and beginning at left wing on the first line with young stars Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner. Maybe this is a great idea by coach Sheldon Keefe and GM Kyle Dubas.

Or maybe it’s a reach that won’t last more than a few games.

Move to Jimmy Vesey, who will begin the season as the second line left winger, playing with the highly skilled John Tavares and William Nylander. Vesey has spent four seasons in the NHL. One year he had as many as 35 points. Last year he played rather terribly with a rather terrible Buffalo Sabres team.

Thornton played sparingly with a bad San Jose team. Defenceman Zach Bogosian was scratched in Buffalo before the Sabres terminated his contract. He did get blessed to play alongside Victor Hedman in Tampa, which brought his career back to life.

And Wayne Simmonds spent last season between the terrible Devils and the bottom feeder Sabres, looking too slow for today’s game.

Maybe these fresh starts will prove fruitful for the Leafs. Maybe these somewhat lost players will find their way in Toronto. There is no maybe with the top of the Leafs roster, nor should there be. Matthews, Marner, Tavares, Nylander, Morgan Rielly, Zach Hyman, Jake Muzzin, TJ Brodie, even goalie Freddie Andersen are proven commodities.

The rest of the roster — that’s the great unknown.

If I’m Lou Lamoriello, now that I’ve signed restricted free agent Mathew Barzal, I’d turn around and trade him to Columbus for PierreLuc Dubois, who wants out. Barzal may be the more dynamic offensive player, but Dubois is the better threezone player, which is the Islanders style. Plus, he’s three inches taller and almost 30 pounds heavier than Barzal, not to mention US$2 million a year cheaper ... One thing stands out about the seven Canadian NHL teams: Boy, do these rosters thin out on the third and fourth lines. There’s not a lot of Yanni Gourdes and Blake Colemans on the third lines of Canadian teams ... Can someone help me here? I can’t see Edmonton missing the playoffs with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. And I can’t see them making it with the rest of its roster.

The silent sounds of the Toronto Blue Jays off-season thus far: Swing and a bunch of misses ... Francisco Lindor is on a very short list of baseball players you can’t take your eyes off. There’s Mookie Betts. There’s Lindor. There’s Fernando Tatis Jr. That’s about it for the absolutely dynamic. The New York Post was so pumped by the Mets trading for Lindor it had nine related stories in the paper the day after the deal ... There are five possible franchise- changing free agents left in the baseball winter: DJ Lemathieu, Trevor Bauer, Marcell Ozuna, J.T. Realmuto and George Springer. The Jays haven’t appeared to have any interest in Ozuna but have kicked tires on the other four. Best chance might be the catcher Realmuto, who unfortunately bats right. The Jays already have Bo Bichette, Lourdes Gurriel Jr, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Teoscar Hernandez batting right. They could use a middle of the order left-handed bat.

Unless I’ve missed something, not a single NFL player has infected an opposition player during this season. With sweat and spit flying, bodies crashing into each other, there has been no COVID- 19 exchanges from games played. It means those who were opposing contact in hockey may have been slightly premature with their beliefs.

One thing Toronto Raptors coach Nick Nurse needs to fix from the early disappointments: His body language. It’s one thing to coach a losing team. It’s another to look like you’re doing it. He needs to keep his mask on and stop arguing with everybody.

When the Raptors knocked off what was left of the Golden State Warriors in the 2019 NBA Finals, they were led in scoring in that six- game series by Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard, who ended up averaging 28.5 points a game that round.

That was less than he had scored against Milwaukee in the Conference Finals and six points less than he managed against Philadelphia one round earlier.

If you do the math now from the final series that’s 28.5 from Leonard, 12 a game from Marc Gasol, 11.3 from Serge Ibaka and 7.3 from Danny Green, all of whom are playing elsewhere in the NBA — a total of 59.1 points a game.

And with Leonard not replaced, and Ibaka not replaced, and Green not really having to be replaced and Gasol’s unusual skill set in an aging body pretty much impossible to replace, it’s not hard to understand the difficulty the Raptors are having this season.

And when you add to that the kind of defender Leonard was, the kind of game- changing defender Gasol was, the solid and fundamental defenders Green and Ibaka were, and the rim protection from Ibaka, the levels of loss from that championship season to now is multi-layered.

So enjoy that championship. Revel in it. Celebrate it. Talk about it with your friends. It was once in a lifetime. And midnight has now struck for the Raptors with Cinderella nowhere to be found.