Leafs can’t hold lead, but belong in playoffs. Feschuk,
Leafs can’t hold lead, but they show they belong in playoffs
One of the great crutches of Maple Leaf failures past has been an obsession with pressure. There’s too much of it in Toronto for hockey players to prosper, we’ve been told. Poor guys. Boo-hoo. And so on.
But in Mike Babcock’s two seasons as head coach, he’s repositioned that tired old rationalization brilliantly. Rather than lament the rabidness of the city, he’s encouraged his players to embrace their legions of fans; to stop reading sports pages and listening to jock radio; to get a hobby that doesn’t involve hockey. (He has suggested hunting and country music). And his players have bought the pitch.
“It should be happiness in your life that you have this great city that cares about everything you do on the ice, and off the ice sometimes,” Frederik Andersen, the Toronto goaltender, was saying recently.
Which is not to say pressure doesn’t exist. Just ask the Washington Capitals after they found themselves down 2-0 midway through the first period of Game 1 of their first-round playoff series with the Maple Leafs.
Yes, the Capitals weathered that early-game scare and bounced back for a 3-2 overtime victory, with Toronto native Tom Wilson scoring the winner on a tough-angle wrister that Andersen probably should have stopped. And for the Leafs, it was a near-miss they’ll lament.
But save for a few warts — say, the Martin Marincin giveaway that set up Wilson goal — it was also an encouraging Toronto performance that threw out the notion that the Capitals are a vastly superior team that’ll romp to a series win.
“A confidence builder, for sure,” Babcock said after it was over. “I liked our game.”
If the performance was unexpected by the many who wrote off the Leafs as sure-to-lose long shots, some measure of the credit had to go to Babcock for the way he expertly framed of the first Maple Leafs playoff game in four years.
All week Babcock poked and prodded and planted seeds. He spoke again and again about the enormous weight hanging off the Capitals, about the heavy feeling of being the favourite. The Capitals, who finished first overall, had to hear it. And if they didn’t, the Leafs did. They parroted Babcock’s reasoning — all the pressure’s on Washington, etcetera.
And then, in the first Maple Leafs playoff game in four years, they went out and played with a nervy, fearless looseness that at least put a scare in the Presidents’ Trophy winners.
“I think they thought it was fun,” Babcock said of his young team. “I kept trying to tell them — we’ve got good players, we’re allowed to play at a high level . . . You don’t have to watch (the Capitals). You can play good.”
They didn’t play good enough to win. But they certainly shot a few shivers through the Verizon Center faithful. And they certainly showed something. For all the talk about Toronto’s woeful defence corps — Marincin was playing his first game in nearly a month with Nikita Zaitsev watching from the press box with an upper-body injury — the Leafs didn’t allow the Capitals to sustain offensive pressure save for hard pushes in the third and in the extra frame. And they certainly contained Alex Ovechkin, who managed one shot on goal in the first period and zero through the rest of regulation.
Sometimes the Leafs cleared it crudely; a glass-and-out here, an icing there. But the Leafs often suffocated the Capitals, took away their space, for much of the night, the way playoff teams are supposed to do. And they got more physical than we’ve seen them. The Leafs averaged 23 hits a game in the regular sea- son. They were credited with 43 by the end of regulation.
It was just one game. It wasn’t a referendum on either team. But Toronto’s opening two goals, which gave them a 2-0 lead before the first period was halfway done, taught us at least two things.
One, the Leafs can skate with the Capitals — in fact, they made the home team look slow at times on Thursday.
Two, Braden Holtby is more than human. While Holtby’s playoff save percentage is an ungodly .938, the best in NHL history, Holtby was woefully out of position on Toronto markers by Mitch Marner and Jake Gardiner. And it taught us something else. Toronto’s youngsters —— and there were nine in the lineup who’d never before played in the Stanley Cup tournament — clearly aren’t out of place.
Marner looked like the most dangerous player on the ice in key moments. Connor Carrick and Marincin, a defensive pair much of the night, looked competent enough for most of it. If the line centred by Auston Matthews wasn’t much of a force, veterans stepped up. Van Riemsdyk, in particular, had a crafty, gritty game, launching a team-high seven shots on goal.
“For the most part we know we’re a good team,” said Matt Hunwick, the veteran Leafs defenceman. “Now I think they know it.”
Washington wasn’t going to wilt. It was 2-2 before the second period was over, Justin Williams scoring both. And as the game wore on, the Capitals poured it on, outshooting the Leafs 19-9 in the third period and overtime combined. Andersen had to be sharp. And save for a botched rebound on the tying goal and a too-slow glove on the winner, he was.
But that’s playoff hockey. And now the question becomes: Can the Leafs prove Thursday’s confidence builder was more than a one-off and keep the pressure on the favourites?