Scrivens has a head for the game
A hockey game is 60 minutes long. And for 55 of those minutes, during one particular stretch of his season as starting goaltender of the Maple Leafs’ top farm club, Ben Scrivens appeared as impenetrable as anyone not playing regularly in the NHL.
As for the other five minutes? Dallas Eakins, head coach of the Toronto Marlies, said that on some occasions it was as though Scrivens, usually as solid as a rock, became as scattered as gravel.
“It seemed like every other night there was a bad goal going in,” Eakins said. “It was almost turning into a disease. It was like we were waiting for it every game, and almost like he was waiting for it.”
What was happening? Scrivens, 25, said those brief but disappointing lapses were simple to describe but harder to cure. His mind, he acknowledged, was wandering. At some point everyone’s does. And though Scrivens said he didn’t want to give the impression that he’s as prone to daydreaming as a 6-year-old soccer goalie picking dandelions and spinning around the goal post, he laid the problem plain.
“You start thinking about a song, or about a movie you watched last week. It really can be absolutely anything that pops into your head,” he said. “It’s no different than when you’re reading a book and you get to the bottom of the paragraph and you’re like, ‘I have no idea what I just read.’ . . . That’s what it was like. You’re focused, you’re focused, and suddenly you’re like, ‘What was I just thinking about?’ ”
On Wednesday, as Scrivens thoughtfully strung sentences into paragraphs in the dressing room of the Toronto Maple Leafs, with whom he is currently playing out the string, he was interrupted by the jabs of various teammates.
Said Joe Colborne: “Scrivy, the (reporter) has a deadline. Give him a chance to get out of here.”
Chimed in Carter Ashton: “Are you doing an interview? It sounds like a conversation.”
Scrivens, an Ivy Leaguer, took on his interrupters one at a time. If he was going to take grief for opining on the intricacies of sports psy- chology, he didn’t mind chiding Colborne for his taste in movies, mockingly reciting dialogue from Warrior, a near-classic of the mixed-martial-arts genre Colborne consumed on a recent Marlies bus trip. As to Ashton’s point about interview as conversation, Scrivens shrugged and said: “It kind of is.” There’ve been times this season when Scrivens has appeared to be in conversation with himself in the crease. As Scrivens and Eakins brainstormed remedies to a goaltender’s brain freeze, Eakins suggested a novel idea: “I said to him, ‘Pretend you’re on the CBC and you’re calling the play-by-play.’ Like, ‘Ryan Hamilton busts down the left wing. . . .’ Do that out loud and it’ll help you focus. You’ll stay in the moment. . . . He took it under advisement.” Perhaps Eakins has hit on a cure for the in-game ennui of Leaf fans in the Randy Carlyle era. Scrivens, for his part, said he found doing play-by-play a little too distracting. (Besides, if he’s going to have a post-playing-career turn on TV, he’ll clearly be a colour guy.) Still, Scrivens said he took the coach’s suggestion to talk out loud during the game. The lapses have mostly abated. “It wasn’t earth-shattering stuff. I was just saying stuff like, ‘Watch the puck,’ and ‘Challenge,’ and ‘Make sure you’re in a good position.’ It was just saying out loud those small reminders,” Scrivens said. “It’s like when you’re first learning to drive a car, they tell student drivers to talk through what they’re doing. ‘Turn the key.’ ‘Shoulder check.’ ‘Check the mirrors for pedestrians.’ . . . You’re saying it all so you’re not thinking about a bunch of other stuff.” In a season in which the Maple Leafs have driven their collective rig off a cliff, Scrivens hasn’t been along for much of the disastrous ride. Though many observers considered him Toronto’s best goaltender in training camp, contractual commitments to James Reimer and Jonas Gustavsson meant Scrivens has seen just nine big-club starts, including the past two against the Sabres. But while most of the Leafs prepare for the links, Scrivens’ work for the year is a long way from finished. Expected to be in the lineup for two remaining games on Toronto’s NHL schedule, including Thursday’s home finale against Tampa Bay, the AHL’S leader in goals-against average (2.07) is also expected to be No. 1 as the Marlies make what they hope will be a lengthy post-season run.
That’s not to say he won’t be making like a golfer. Scrivens said he recently found some helpful advice in the book Fearless Golf, a recommendation from Ron Wilson, the Leafs’ ex-coach. The book’s teachings are purported to help “golfers to get rid of the extra baggage that clutters their minds” — baggage like song lyrics and movie dialogue and the rest of what Scrivens calls the “daily residue.”
“As much as we’re part of a team as goaltenders, a lot of the stuff we do is individual. . . . It’s you versus the puck. In that sense, it’s like the golfer versus the golf course,” said Scrivens. “I found that helped out a lot.”
Reading extensively about sports psychology, Scrivens said, can recall The Wizard of Oz. When coaches employ the psychological tricks of the trade, he sometimes feels he knows a little too much about what’s behind the curtain.
Is there such a thing as being too smart for a simple game? As a conversation wound down, Scrivens added up the pros and cons of his continuing education in the ways of the brain.
“I think it’s more of an advantage than a disadvantage,” Scrivens said. “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.”