Confidence key for Leafs’ D
If there was a common thread running through the Maple Leafs’ defensive corps a season ago, maybe it was this: All too often, confidence was lacking on multiple fronts.
Plenty of observers didn’t believe in the all-round adequacy of Toronto’s blueliners. And some of them didn’t always seem to believe in themselves.
Which, in some cases, was understandable. Connor Carrick, for instance, spent large swaths of last season, including all seven playoff games, as a healthy scratch. It was a chronic lack of usage that could have given him the impression the Leafs were done with him — until, that is, newly installed general manager Kyle Dubas signed Carrick, a restricted free-agent, to another one-year deal worth $1.3 million (U.S.) back in June.
And Nikita Zaitsev, too, said he found it difficult to regain his form after he missed about six weeks after he was hit by a fluky Henrik Zetterberg shot that broke a bone in his right foot and kept him out until mid-January. An underwhelming few months later, he probably hadn’t done enough to convince the skeptics he was worthy of the seven-year, $31.5 million contract extension he’d signed the year before.
“Two different tales, right?” Carrick was saying on Tuesday. “You’ve got Zaitsev on a long-term deal. You’ve got myself, last year I was on the (final) year of a deal, this year I’m on a one-year deal. And that goes to show you — maybe (confidence) is not always contractual. It’s amazing how quickly it can go in this game. And it’s amazing how quickly you can get it back.”
As the pre-season began on Tuesday night in Lucan, Ont., projecting the bulk of Toronto’s 2018-19 blueline wasn’t particularly tricky. Morgan Rielly and Ron Hainsey logged big minutes together a year ago, as did Jake Gardiner and Zaitsev. They’re all but locks to retain their spots in the top two pairings, as it sits. But the third pairing is less of a sure thing. On the left side, Travis Dermott seems to have the inside track, given how he played all seven post-season games last spring. Still, coach Mike Babcock offered a wake-up call of sorts when he said of Dermott on Sunday: “I want him to act like he’s trying to make the team.” And certainly there are other left-shooting options, among them Andreas Borgman and Calle Rosen.
And there’s a bevy of right-shot possibilities, too. Justin Holl is in the mix, as is Carrick. And while it’s easy to make an argument both deserve an opportunity — Holl was a top-pairing rock for a championship Marlies team and Carrick has shown flashes of superior skill at the NHL level — both have been somewhat overshadowed in camp by the arrival of Igor Ozhiganov, the 25year-old KHL veteran who was wooed here as a free agent.
That Babcock was a part of the Toronto contingent that helped recruit Ozhiganov probably doesn’t hurt his chances; the new guy in town has that advantage. But Zaitsev, who played with Ozhiganov in the KHL, said it’ll ultimately be on his compatriot to carve out an NHL niche.
“I think he’s got to show it for himself,” said Zaitsev of Ozhiganov. “He’s a smart guy, good body. Moves the puck well. He can pass the puck. He’s got a good brain. Hopefully he will show his best.”
In search for their respective betterment, Zaitsev and Carrick made changes to their off-season routine. Zaitsev, who spent the previous summer partaking in gruelling CrossFit-style circuits, pared down the duration of his highintensity efforts to more closely mirror the demands of a game.
“Last year I did, like, eightminute circuits with the heart rate at a high level. This year we did it like a hockey game — 40 seconds at a time. That’s the biggest difference,” said Zaitsev, 26. “But everything was different. I changed many more things.”
In part because Carrick played a relatively light NHL schedule — just 47 regularseason appearances, down considerably from the season before, when he played 67 regular-season dates and all six playoff games — he said he spent more of his off-season than usual honing his skating and stickhandling.
“I was trying to work on being more deceptive offensively and defensively, more misinformation, trying to throw people off. A lot of work on skating better and getting some of that puck confidence back,” he said.
A season ago, Carrick was often beat out for a spot in the lineup by Roman Polak, who brought a beastly physicality Babcock seemed to favour. With Polak gone, it’ll be interesting to see how Babcock chooses to scratch that itch, especially since it’s clear Dubas sees the position differently. In a summer in which the new GM didn’t re-sign Polak, he has said repeatedly that he sees Toronto’s ideal defencemen, not as battering rams who dole out abuse, but as skilled athletes who make plays.
“It means you’ve got to go out and make ’em,” Carrick said. “And there’s a blend. (Dubas) is not the one on the bench, still. He’s going to be the one making personnel decisions. And it goes back to that confidence thing as a player. Coach wants you to fit into this mould. GM wants you to fit into this (slightly different) mould. You want to fit in this (still slightly different) mould. And then there’s that Venn diagram — if you find a way to play somewhere in the middle of those, everybody’s super-happy and you’re playing as your optimal self.”
That’s the sweet spot. For NHL defencemen who may or may not inspire confidence in their fan-base, that’s where the confidence resides. But if finding its location was easy, everybody with a pair of skates and an NHL contract would be the next coming of Nick Lidstrom.
Zaitsev, for his part, figures he knows the key to a bounceback season beyond avoiding bonesplitting pucks.
“Do the simple, right things on the ice,” he said. “If I do that, I have lots of confidence, so it’s all good.”
Still, for everyone but a few elites, the search for true selfbelief, not to mention true believers, never really ends.
“That’s my goal, to understand where I fit in the system, and to understand individually — what’s my fabric? What are the things Connor Carrick has to do every night, no matter what, in order to be an effective NHL defenceman for the Toronto Maple Leafs?” Carrick said. “There’s so many ways you can go about skinning that cat that is playing the game. But it’s a pretty simple game, still. That’s what’s so fun about that puzzle.”