Five-day break offers goalie shot at polishing golf game
The Dane said he found an antidote to post-break slippage during this season’s Christmas holiday, which saw the Maple Leafs enjoy a few days off before a Dec. 28 game in Arizona. On that trip Andersen enjoyed some California sunshine and stayed off the ice, but he also stayed active with daily tennis and golf.
“It’s not the hardest workout, but it’s better than sitting inside playing board games,” Andersen said.
So, bye-week rule No. 3: Easy on the Scrabble, gentlemen.
Whether or not any of the above guiding principles will be relayed around the dressing room — well, Andersen’s less a preacher than a doer, more a leader by example than a speaker of commandments.
And even the great enunciator of team doctrine, head coach Mike Babcock, shrugged a little Wednesday when he acknowledged the reality of the in-season holiday. If he were a younger coach with less exposure to the world of guaranteed-contract millionaires, Babcock told the assembled media, he’d encourage his players to “take their skates to the Bahamas and skate every day.”
But Babcock, in his 15th NHL season, knows better than to harbour such grand delusions.
“No one’s doing that,” Babcock said. “Enjoy your time.”
Babcock, at least, can thank the schedule maker for the fact that the Maple Leafs, like the majority of teams, only get a five-day hiatus. Some get six days between games this month. By a quirk of scheduling the Senators get a seven-day interruption.
How ready the Leafs will be when they return for a Jan. 16 home game against the St. Louis Blues is anyone’s guess. With their playoff probability hovering around 96 per cent heading into Wednesday, this according to numbers at SportsClubStats.com, convincing the team that regular-season games are an urgent matter has been a challenge. Maybe it’ll get easier after the bye. Then again, when the Leafs return they’ll have less than two weeks until the NHL’s five-day all-star break, wherein the only Maple Leaf obliged to wear skates will be lone all-star invitee Auston Matthews.
So maybe we’ll have to wait until February to begin to get a sense of how good this team can actually be. As it is, the Leafs have been giving a lot of observers the feeling that, as solid as they’ve been, they’re a long way from approaching their competitive ceiling.
As Babcock said in the wake of Monday’s overtime loss to the Blue Jackets, wherein the Maple Leafs played well enough but didn’t exactly protect a late 2-0 lead with play- off-worthy ferocity: “I think there’s a whole other level we’ve got to get to if we’re going to have any success.”
Said Matthews on Wednesday: “We definitely can be a lot better.”
There’ve been a lot of Maple Leaf teams over the past couple of decades that claimed to be better than their record. This might be the first one that actually makes a compelling case. These Leafs have upside. These Leafs are clearly pacing themselves. And Babcock’s pacing them, too — portioning minutes with an eye toward the long haul.
Andersen, mind you, is the exception — the NHL leader in minutes played. So, as much as he might like to keep going, surely he could use a pit stop.
How’s his golf game? Andersen said recently that he and frequent playing partner Andrew Cogliano, Andersen’s longtime friend and former teammate in Anaheim, share an erratic quality to their on-course performance.
“One minute we look like PGA Tour players. The next we look like 50 handicaps,” Andersen said with a laugh.
In other words: Fore! As the NHL season heads deeper into its back nine, maybe Babcock will have some luck convincing his players to ratchet up the consistency and intensity. Then again, in hockey as in golf, the majors don’t begin to arrive until April, and it’s not easy pretending otherwise.