Just the Sparks a tanking team needs
You knew Mike Babcock was fully committed to the tank on Saturday night when Garret Sparks showed up as the Maple Leafs’ starting goaltender.
Consider the undeniable set of circumstances: Sparks has been one of the rare weak links during a lateseason surge that has seen the Leafs threaten to climb out of the NHL basement and imperil their draft-lottery odds. And yet Babcock — he of the “I-want-to-win-every-night” reputation –— decided it’d be Sparks between the pipes in Saturday’s 3-2 loss to the Detroit Red Wings.
Babcock picked Sparks after watching the goaltender put in a not-quite-ready-for-primetime performance in a 4-1 loss in Buffalo on Thursday night. He picked Sparks even though Jonathan Bernier, healthy and available for service, was coming off a month of March that saw him reel off a sizzling .938 save percentage.
He picked Sparks even though Sparks had allowed three or more goals in six of his previous seven appearances, and that his save percentage during that stretch is an unsightly .880.
In other words, if the Maple Leafs had been wholly and truly committed to victory on Saturday night, there is no known universe in which Sparks would have been their No. 1 goalie.
Knowing all this, Leafs fans should be thankful. Before this season the franchise piled up a well-documented history of squandering favourable lottery odds with fruitless lateseason surges. Not that staying at the bottom of the NHL standings guarantees Auston Matthews will be destined for Toronto in the fall. Staying at the bottom of the standings simply maximizes the chances of good things happening for the Maple Leafs when the ping-pong balls fly on April 30.
Sports franchises play the percentages in every other endeavour. Why wouldn’t they play them here? Saturday’s choice in net, in other words, amounted to an evolutionary adaptation to the reality of the situation that had been too often unseen in Leafland.
Still, Leaf fans need to understand it can’t have been easy for Babcock to give Sparks the nod in three of the past four starts — all three of which the Maple Leafs have lost. For all the talk of the importance of seeing what Sparks can do in the wake of the James Reimer trade, that’s a management concern. For a coach who runs a supposed meritocracy to ice any option but his best, pride must be swallowed and ego must be shelved.
There probably isn’t an NHL team Babcock would rather beat than the Red Wings, for whom he served for a decade before taking a $50-million deal to coach the Maple Leafs last spring.
On Saturday, Babcock’s former squad was in desperate need of a victory to help extend a remarkable franchise playoff streak to 25 consecutive seasons. There are Detroit veterans who haven’t mourned Babcock’s absence, who considered the coach’s piercing intensity a source of stress the franchise could do without. A playoff miss — especially during a late-season struggle that has seen captain Henrik Zetterberg lament the team’s lack of urgency — will be a tidy bit of proof they were wrong.
For all that, tanking is a difficult business requiring subtlety and straight faces. Babcock must insist he is trying to win every night — and, goaltending decisions aside, there’s no reason to believe he isn’t. Certainly he’s expecting the players at his disposal to play their best. It’s hard to imagine any of them aren’t.
Still, it wasn’t the coach’s fault the Male Leafs diminished their roster on Thursday when they shipped the likes of Zach Hyman and Connor Brown to the Marlies.
Hyman had been a Babcock favourite and a puck-possession machine in his 16 games with the big club. Brown had been maybe Toronto’s best player in a win in Florida on Tuesday. The Marlies promoted in the transaction — Tobias Lindberg and Kasperi Kapanen among them — weren’t equivalents.
Neither, for that matter, will the Marlie who theoretically replaces Nazem Kadri should Kadri be slapped with a suspension for a high second-period cross check to Luke Glendening that drew a two-minute penalty but looked vicious enough to deserve more.
Still, it’s not as though putting Sparks in net added up to an automatic loss. The Leafs, who outplayed the labouring Red Wings for long stretches, had plenty of chances to win on Saturday. William Nylander, along with setting up Colin Greening for Toronto’s first goal, repeatedly showed a patient, explosive skill set that threatened to set up one or two more. And he potted the Kadri feed that, with Sparks out of the net, brought the Leafs within a goal with 1:05 to go.
Sparks, mind you, hasn’t exactly announced himself to be a shoo-in to be a big-leaguer next season. Heck, Sparks acknowledged before Saturday’s game that it’s hardly a given he will be reinserted as the Marlies’ starter when he returns for their impending AHL playoff run. Antoine Bibeau was in goal for the AHLers in Saturday’s 6-3 win over Grand Rapids. Recent signing Kasimir Kaskisuo got his first AHL win on Friday night. Veteran Alex Stalock, acquired in the Reimer trade, is also in the fold.
“There’s three good goalies there right now and I know I have my work cut out for me,” Sparks said. “I know that I have to be on if I want to play in the playoffs for that team.”
At his worst on Saturday, Sparks looked predictably off.
He allowed a first-period powerplay goal by Brad Richards through a generous five-hole. He failed to control more than a couple of rebounds. And while he also made a save or two that got a rise out of an otherwise sleepy Air Canada Centre, Sparks also did a passable impression of a bad 1980s goaltender while being beaten on a top-of-the-circles slapper from Kyle Quincey on the goal that made it 3-1.
In other words, Sparks was just shaky enough to backstop his team to an important loss, and Babcock was precisely sage enough to put him into position to succeed — er, fail. Call it cynical, but it’s an awfully refreshing thing that the folks running the Maple Leafs have discovered a bit of late-season common sense.