Rielly seeks silver lining to lost season
Young defender ready to take more vocal leadership role with club moving forward
Morgan Rielly is sure there will come a time, maybe in a year or two, when he’ll realize all this nonsense he’s witnessed these first two seasons as a Maple Leaf will have been worth it.
He’ll realize he’s a better player, if not a better human being, for it. “We’ve had some tough times here,” said Rielly. “I think when you’re down the road, you can draw from these experiences, to get better from it.
“That’s the attitude you have to have. You can’t be negative. You have to try to draw positives out of it.”
The Leafs took Tuesday off and face the Buffalo Sabres on Wednesday night in a battle among teams whose fan bases care more about draft potential than wins or losses. Both teams are eyeing a top-five pick and covet No. 1 overall with a chance to draft Connor McDavid.
A high draft pick is one of the positives the Leafs can draw from this season. The Leafs have only picked No. 1 overall once — in 1985, getting Wendel Clark. In the interim, they’ve had a No. 3 pick (Scott Thornton, 1989) and two No. 5s (Luke Schenn, 2009 and Rielly, 2012).
But Rielly was talking about something else, something less tangible after a crazy season that has been part circus, part soap opera.
He hints maybe he was too quiet as the team went off the rails. He was a young guy, after all, and playing limited minutes with limited success through last December and early January when things started to go downhill. He let the veterans in the room do the talking.
But now, he thinks, he will defer less in the future.
“You want to be a leader. You wan to help the team,” said Rielly. “You want to be there for your teammates. You want to lead by example. That’s what you have to do. As our time here goes on, that’s what’s going to happen. But you can’t rush it.
“Just because you’re young, that doesn’t mean you can’t talk. You can’t speak up. You have to be able to do that as well.”
Rielly has taken on a bigger role as the season has progressed. Through the end of last December, he played more than 20 minutes a game only seven times and then it was only by a minute or two. Since the beginning of January, he has played fewer than 20 minutes only six times and routinely pushes 24 and 25 minutes a game.
“He’s so dynamic,” Leafs interim coach Peter Horachek said of Rielly. “Most nights, his skating ability and elusiveness is exceptional. Any time he runs into problems, it’s decision making, when he has the puck and where he is on the ice. That’s experience. That comes as he continues to play.
“He can do a lot of things most people can’t do. His development is really ahead of the curve.”
The bigger role — and Jake Gardiner is another whose role has increased — is partly by design and partly out of necessity. The Leafs were without captain Dion Phaneuf due to a hand injury and have lost three veteran defencemen: Cody Franson was traded, while Stephane Robidas and Roman Polak are now lost to injury.
Veteran Eric Brewer is in, as is reclamation project Tim Erixon. The Maple Leafs sent Petter Granberg back to the Marlies on Tuesday, but will have to call up someone for the game against Buffalo, perhaps Andrew MacWilliam.
Whoever it will be, the defensive pairings seem to change every night.
“That’s our biggest challenge, all these new bodies in our lineup,” said Leafs assistant coach Steve Spott. “We’re almost back to training camp mode, bringing them up to speed with what your systems are.”
And as much as Leafs Nation might wonder how low the Leafs can go, the players in the room won’t lose on purpose. They’re simply too professional and competitive to do that. They’re playing the games to win.
“I think we have to have high expectations as a team,” said Rielly. “We want to close it out the right way. We want to be able to win some games here and improve as a team, grow as a group. Try to make the most of it.”
Some players take a stumble back in their second year in the NHL. A sophomore slump, some call it. Not Rielly. There have been stumbles. But more of the one-step-back, twosteps-forward kind.