Maple Leafs look ahead by re-signing Spezza
TORONTO — The Maple Leafs first official move of 2021-22 wasn’t to push out an underwhelming playoff performer, but bring back their most valued veteran.
And who better than Jason Spezza to try and lift two weeks of gloom in town after the first-round defeat to Montreal, which is repping the North right now in the Stanley Cup Final Four. The first thing the 38-year-old Spezza said Wednesday after signing another one-year, hometown discount minimum salary of $750,000 US, was that he feels Leafs Nation anguish.
“I’m frustrated, I don’t think a couple of weeks has lessened the pain. I know that anything you’re going to say at this time of year doesn’t really matter because we lost.
“With COVID-19, there hasn’t been as much retrospective as a group as there’d be in the past. (But) we’ve thought about it a lot since we lost, what went wrong and what we need to do differently to move forward. There’s no concrete answers to any of it, but the only way to get there is work harder and do more to put ourselves in even better position the next time we’re in the playoffs.
“The group we have is extremely dedicated, young guys in their prime who will continue to get better and eventually learn from these (wretched first-round defeats). To go through the year we have, to finish first and improve our defensive play, it gives us hope.”
While few Leafs players can stomach seeing the playoffs from their couches these days, Spezza is tuning in as always, evaluating how players and teams handle adversity under high pressure.
“I’m still a student of the game. You see the teams who’ve gotten through, who quickly turn the page and move on. Tampa Bay was a great example after Game 1 (losing to New York), then they played great. I don’t know if Tampa in the past would’ve done that, maybe they’d have got flustered after the first loss. That’s what we have to learn. Unfortunately, our experiences have been a negative, but we have to draw on that next time and be aggressive when we have a chance to close teams out.
“There’s room for optimism. You’re never as close as you think you are, or as far as you think. We have work to do to get better, but we’re pretty close to having a run. Until we do, no one is going to believe us, but internally we believe it.”
After two years in Toronto at the NHL minimum, he has 55 points in 112 games, 30 of those in a productive 2021 where he added five playoff points. He’s only been assessed 24 penalty minutes as a Leaf and has kept up a 53.2 per cent face-off percentage through his career.
It’s the perfect marriage: Toronto in a salary cap crunch and Spezza is unwilling to move his wife and four daughters, aged 5-to-11, from his hometown.
Spezza, who turned 38 this week, is already back in the gym. If the Leafs don’t work out a similar extension with 42-year-old forward Joe Thornton, which likely isn’t happening, Spezza would again become the oldest player on the team, while holding down power play duty, penalty killing, 5-on-5 and defensive zone draws.
Spezza reached 30 points last year in 54 games and with 970 career points, consisting of 351 goals and 619 assists, he could join a small club of about 90 Nhlers with 1,000 points and 1,000plus games. But milestones aren’t what interests him about next season.
“I have a lot of points, I’d like to go on a run and play into the summer,” he insisted. “I’m a better version of myself when we’re winning.”