Maple Leafs: The gods of television may have listened to their head coach

Mike Babcock seemed in a jovial mood on Thursday, making jokes in his answers.

He was asked about Curtis McElhinney’s importance as a backup goalie and he took a shot at the league schedulers.

“We give him all the terrible starts,” Babcock said. “All the back-to-backs. We like those. In this organization, we like to have as many as we can.”

Of course, the opposite is true. Babcock, like Leafs coaches before him, has railed at the number of games the Leafs play on consecutive nights.

“It’s about TV, or something like that. I don’t know exactly what it is,” Babcock said.

It is largely due to TV, an irony lost on no one since the Leafs are owned by media giants Bell and Rogers. Babcock might have been heard, though. The Leafs play 13 back-toback series this season, down from their usual 17 or 18 annually.

BIG CAMP: By now most teams are down to about 30 players, while the Leafs still have 49 in camp. But they’re in two groups: a 25-player collection that looks NHL-bound, and one with 24 where the players will eventually be sent to the minors or back to Europe.

It means Babcock runs two practices a day, but he sees it as an advantage.

“What I like is, instead of having 30 guys and going really slow, you get to practise with normal practice groups and you get to go real fast. To me that other one doesn’t make any sense at all, plus our farm team is right in town, makes it easy for us. We get to evaluate all the players over a longer period of time, so we know who we

want to call up.”

GAME ACTION: Goalie Frederik Andersen will play Friday in Detroit, while McElhinney is likely to get Saturday’s start against the Red Wings in Toronto . . . Both the Red Wings and Maple Leafs are expected to dress near-NHL rosters on Friday night . . . Defenceman Roman Polak will likely see his first action Saturday.

GET GOING: Babcock did not sound that happy with the effort lately of the line of Nazem Kadri, Patrick Marleau and Leo Komarov. “I thought early (in camp) they were going good. But that line’s got to be better. That group can be way better, way quicker, a lot more diligent. They’ve got to upgrade. We need Kadri to be real good for us to be effective. That group has got to find some chemistry and get going.” Kevin McGran