First-half DNA test reveals need for shot of adrenalin
The “hard part of coaching” in the NHL, Ken Hitchcock was saying the other day, involves enforcing standards.
A healthy work ethic has to be non-negotiable on any successful team. But insisting on an unwavering commitment to the grind — because, hey, the grind is painful, and the regular season runs six months — is no easy feat.
“I don’t want to say you have to break them. But you have to win that battle,” said Hitchcock. “It’s a hard battle. You have to win it, though, if your team’s going to be a solid team at the end of the year. If they’re going to win the close games, they have to have that element in their DNA.”
It’s in the midst of such a battle that the Maple Leafs took a triumphant pause for this weekend’s all-star break. Where are they at the 51-game mark? On a two-game win streak and, to look at the bigger picture, precisely where their coach asked them to be. Mike Babcock has long broken up the season into five-game segments. The stated goal is to achieve at least six points in each segment — a formidable 98-point pace. Fifty-one games into the 82game marathon, the Maple Leafs are tracking precisely on a 98-point pace.
And yet there’s a sense they could be doing better. The team, at times, has looked like it’s pacing itself — a swaggering, skill-brimming group emboldened by last year’s six-game playoff squeaker to believe it has the ability to flip a switch when the games get meaningful. And maybe it does.
Still, there’s at least some internal concern that such an approach could backfire, as expressed by goaltender Frederik Andersen’s insistence the Leafs “figure out who wants to commit to playing as a team,” part of a post-game critique in Philadelphia earlier this month that blamed the team’s inconsistency on “a lack of effort at certain points.”
And if effort is the problem, then maybe it only makes sense that Babcock has spent the first few months of the season rewarding players he sees as prototypical worker bees. Babcock has spoken of making a conscious choice to “empower the people who do it right every day and work hard every day.”
And what about empowering the people who do it best?
“If you just empower the skill, pretty soon your team doesn’t play at all,” Babcock said.
Anyone who understands Leafs Nation’s penchant for creating a culture of entitlement around even marginally skilled players knows Babcock’s concern is founded in precedent. Still, a team of stonehanded plumbers, no matter the enormity of their good-guy tireless- ness, isn’t winning the Stanley Cup. There’s a balance to be struck. And it was interesting to see Babcock, in the two wins that preceded the break, veer more toward empowering the finesse-inclined members of the squad than he is often wont to do. You know the moves by now. The increasingly irrelevant Matt Martin was sent to the press box to make room for 21-year-old speedster Kasperi Kapanen. Leo Komarov played mostly on the fourth line to enable Mitch Marner to play alongside Nazem Kadri and Patrick Marleau. Fourth-line regular Connor Brown got time with Tyler Bozak and James van Riemsdyk on the third unit. And suddenly, for the first time all season, the Leafs’ top nine forwards, as measured by points per game played, found themselves occupying its top three lines. Two wins in two nights later — both victories coming without injured defencemen Morgan Rielly and Nikita Zaitsev — it looks like an approach worthy of continued examination.
“We had some pretty good speed tonight,” Toronto all-star Auston Matthews said after the Maple Leafs outskated the Stars to a 4-1 result on Thursday. “We kind of just let our speed and our skill take over.”
Said Babcock, when asked about his line combinations going forward: “The great thing about it is we’ve got a break and lots of time to think about that.”
For most of the season the coach has appeared of a mind that his lineup requires elements that don’t strictly prioritize speed and skill and hockey sense. Thus the presence of Martin in the lineup for 47 of 51 games. And thus the heavy usage of the ever-relentless but fading Komarov, on pace for a 20-point season but still ranking fifth in forward ice time per game. Martin “keeps the flies off,” as Babcock is fond of saying in reference to the veteran’s occasional role as the designated fighter. And Komarov, like speed-challenged defenceman Roman Polak, is prized for his example-setting, pain-bedamned dedication to the craft.
Still, on-ice menace is a dwindling commodity in the NHL. Even against the heavy Stars, who rank second in the league in fighting majors, Martin’s presence didn’t seem to be missed. And as much as there’s no denying the merits of internal example-setting, Komarov played a season-low 12:27 in Chicago on Wednesday and the Leafs, though they started slowly, somehow found enough inspiration to win in overtime.
That’s not to mock Babcock’s attempts at creating a workplace culture where going hard is rewarded. But if the coach’s message can’t withstand this relatively minor and ability-based redistribution of ice time, it was doomed to be ignored all along.
Which is not to minimize Hitchcock’s insistence that hard work will beat talent if talent doesn’t work hard. As Hitchcock said the other day, sketching out the dressing-room doomsday that arrives when a coach fails to inject the requisite diligence into his roster’s DNA: “Then you’re kind of hoping or begging them to play that way, and it doesn’t work. At the end of the day, it usually falls apart.”
That’s the kind of dysfunction Babcock has been trying hard to avoid in the ancestral home of blue and white disease. Nobody is going to respect a skilled roster that too often sleepwalks in lieu of sprinting. Which is why there’s only one way for the Maple Leafs to ensure their coach doesn’t revert to his old lineup standbys: Keep sprinting.
With a little more than two months until the playoffs, it’s probably about time to flip the switch.