THE GOALIE WAR: BERNIER OR REIMER?
The fight to be No. 1 has heated up but no one has won the job yet. And that’s a good thing.
There are three reasons why there won’t be a decision anytime soon on which netminder is No. 1 with the Maple Leafs.
One, and most important, Randy Carlyle doesn’t want there to be.
Two, this is the kind of decision that might be ap- propriate after 60 games, not three.
Three, having two goalies is a GOOD thing, not a BAD thing.
So Jonathan Bernier has been better than James Reimer in his share of the three Leaf games played so far, and good for Bernier. This is clearly the best opportunity of his pro career to assert himself as a prominent NHL goalkeeper, and he seems more than prepared for the challenge.
But that doesn’t mean he’s No. 1, and my goodness, it doesn’t mean Reimer’s on the trading block. Sure, Brian Burke was in the ACC on Saturday night, and you’d better get used to it. Burke has two small children he will be visiting regularly in the city, so he’ll be at lots of Leaf games.
That doesn’t mean he’s scouting Reimer for Calgary. Moreover, even if he was, the Flames don’t have a goalie to give and unless they plan on trading Sven Baertschi, Tyler Wotherspoon or their first-round pick next June — and of course they’re not — they don’t have a great deal to trade at the moment.
But back to the first point about the Bernier-Reimer joust for the crease.
Carlyle isn’t interested in declaring a victor. He wants the two young netminders to push each other, to challenge each other, to create a sense of competition within the room.
He wants to make it clear that nobody in the Leaf organization gets anything easily anymore.
Moreover, goalies get hurt. You need two, and there’s every chance that in two weeks or two months we’ll be talking about how hot Reimer is.
So relax, people. This is a very good thing.
The back end of the Leafs, however, is slightly more of a concern and really, the adventures of Cody Franson and the fact the Leafs were playing a 19-year-old, a 23-year-old and a player (Paul Ranger) who is getting his feet wet in the NHL again after being away for four years had as much to do with Reimer’s problems on Saturday night against the Senators as did his ongoing issues with rebound control.
It’s a very young defence, and it lacks a go-to, dependable pairing. Some nights Dion Phaneuf and Carl Gunnarsson can be very effective, but you’re just not going to be able to trot that tandem out in the final minutes of periods and games the way, say, Boston has been able to use Zdeno Chara and Dennis Seidenberg for years.
So it becames a bit of a guessing game for Carlyle pretty much every night, even more so with the team’s most consistent defenceman, stay-at-home Mark Fraser, out with an injury.
If anything, the impressive 3-0 start by the Leafs buys Carlyle some time to let Ranger find his bearings again, and to give Jake Gardiner and Morgan Rielly the minutes they need to continue to develop their games.
It’s not clear whether Rielly will assume a regular position, but his minus-3 rating on Saturday night was an unfair reflection on how he actually played in 18:07 of ice time. Heck, the kid almost won the game with two chances early in overtime, and it’s a sign of Carlyle’s expertise in handling young defencemen that rather than sitting Rielly as the game wore on, he played him more.
Carlyle, after all, remembers what it’s like to be a kid defenceman playing for the Leafs.
Gardiner was a plus-2 and of the three games so far, Saturday night’s might have been his best performance as he tries to marry his sense of adventure and creativity with the need to be responsible.
Like the goalies, there’s just no need at this moment to make some sort of declarative statement on any of the Leaf defencemen, let alone Ranger, Gardiner or Rielly.
Let ’em play, and this has a chance to be a very mobile group. With Ranger — who played the most minutes (21:57 against Ottawa) that he has skated since Oct. 8, 2009, when he played 23:46 for Tampa against the New Jersey Devils — you’re not going to know until Christmas, probably, if the Leafs’ pre-season suggestion that he might be able to play in the team’s top four on defence was accurate or a misguided expectation.
Mostly, he’s just inconsistent right now from shift to shift, but the ability is obvious as he re-adjusts to the speed of the NHL after playing very successfully in the AHL last year.
In general, yes, the Leafs have been sloppy at times, but it’s been curious just how scrambly the NHL in general was in its first week, with lots of goals, coaches yelling at each other and pointless fights that must, apparently, follow every good bodycheck these days.
It’s been entertaining, and the Leafs have been as entertaining as any team, scoring 11 goals in three games.
Time to let it breathe for a while, folks.