BOZAK, BLUES HAVE LAST LAUGH
Leafs welcome back Bozak — and let Blues have their way in one-sided affair
Former Maple Leaf returns to warm welcome. Maybe a little too warm.
Rumour has it — Mitch Marner doing the rumouring — that Tyler Bozak went to see ultra chick-flick A Star is Born recently and got all leaky.
“Everyone was going to see it with their girlfriend. I heard he got, uh, around that mark of the emotional stage.” Snark-snark. (That dig is still looking for a verb.)
Hockey rinks are a tears-free zone so there were no waterworks at that place where the Maple Leafs do their thing on Saturday night, though the scene was certainly set for mushiness with the return of old friend, old linemate, old mentor Bozak. Nine years a Leaf and Bozak merited a 30-second video tribute as players, at least those in blue and white, tap-tap-tapped their sticks, after which Bozak raised his in acknowledgment of the crowd.
It does get wearying, these the-waywe-were homages.
Maybe some day not so distant William Nylander will come back as an ex-Leaf too, just sayin’. Because suddenly Toronto is grievously missing AWOL Willy. Back-to-back losses, consecutive scratchy efforts, another game with Auston Matthews wearing the cloak of invisibility despite six shots. One hundred and sixteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds between goals this week, from Monday versus the Kings and Morgan Rielly finally putting Toronto on the board, set up by Marner. One goal in three games for this offensive juggernaut.
Flicked off rather easily 4-1 by the Blues, except for a third-period pushback, St. Louis a team off to a miserable start, dragging a 1-3-2 record into town, to which Bozak had contributed just one (1) goal, yoked to long-ago Leaf Alexander Steen and Pat Maroon.
We’ll get to the game, such as it was, shortly.
A sweet vignette from days gone by was the pre-game ritual of the Leafs exiting their dressing room and lowfiving Bozak’s toddler son Kanon. Boyish Marner, who seems to have a particular affinity with the spawn of teammates, didn’t have to bend over so deep. The little big man of the Leafs can shop in the child section himself, even with some bulk added on over the summer.
“He meant a lot to me, him and JVR,”
said Marner, referring to Tyler, not Kanon, and the other flank, James van Riemsdyk, on a cha-cha unit that spent most of last season together. “They were a big part of growing me into who I am now.”
Friday evening, Marner had dinner with Bozak. Saturday evening, hail-fellow-well-met was cast aside, congeniality vanishing at drop of puck. All Marner saw was a Blues jersey with an opponent inside it, as their respective lines started head to head from the opening faceoff and were frequently on the ice together — at least when Nazem Kadri wasn’t deployed pivot-a-pivot. (Note the grin-and-a-chirp between Kadri and Bozak their first time at the faceoff dot.) Bozak, by the way, was 5-0 on draws through the opening 20 minutes.
From the reverse perspective, Bozak got an belly full of the confounding, wiry and elusive 21-year-old who’d once been his protégé project, dangling the puck through the D, flitting around the O-zone like a sixlegged stick insect on a pond, albeit for naught on a night when nothing was clicking for the Leafs. My, how we miss those long ago days — was it really just last week? — when freewheeling Toronto filled its boots with goals. Mike Babcock must have smacked some knock-it-off sense into their heads.
Hey, taking the mickey out of the Leafs when their heads start to swell is a coach’s prerogative. This one is notorious for squeezing the jazz out of the game and a system emphasis on playing without the puck. Yup, that’s what fans come to see — guys playing without the puck, on the Groundhog Day cycle.
A year ago, Babcock lowered the tough-love boom on Marner, burying the fleet-footed sophomore on a fourth line that felt like doing penance for dubious sins. Allegedly, that snapped Marner to attention as he would go on to a defining season, leading Toronto with 69 points, despite no better than 11th on the roster in icetime.
Meh, says Marner, looking back 12 months, still sounding unconvinced that his demotion was what stirred his soul with I’ll-show-you nerve.
“I don’t know about that. I think it depends on the player. A tough coach could be hard on some people, but a lot of play- ers need it. I was kind of in the middle (range) of that.’’
Thinks about it a moment longer.
“I didn’t really care, to be honest.” Yay Mitch. Generally, among the most humorous and good-natured Leafs also, especially with the departure or prank-y Bozak.
“Just making sure every day I came in happy, joking and being myself. I think I came in last year a little too serious, not being myself. I tried to change that right away. Started enjoying myself more and having fun with the guys more. Not put as much pressure on yourself, feel like the world is on top of your shoulders. Got to have fun, that was a big part of the difference.’’
Obviously not a whole lot of fun for the Leafs on this night and that was not entirely their own doing. The big and heavy Blues clogged the middle, which is what lousy teams team, denying Toronto any fluidity of movement, blunting the Leafs’ signature speed before it could get a groove on.
A grinding game and the Leafs have largely eschewed that thus far in the 2018-19 campaign because it hasn’t been necessary. But opposing teams are clearly adjusting to neutralize Toronto’s vaunted attack. Blues held Toronto to 23 shots, only a handful of them threatening, Jake Allen beaten only by Rielly at 4:22 of the third, surging in from the faceoff circle on the Marner set-up, the shot somehow getting through a mish-mash of bodies.
“We’ve got to do a better job,” said Rielly, looking ahead to Wednesday’s encounter with a likewise hefty team in Winnipeg. “Less turnovers, playing off the cycle a little more. Grind a little more than we did tonight.”
That starts in their own end, as every Leaf well knows. Against St. Louis, the Leafs were wrong-footed and miscommunicating too often in their zone, most vividly on display when both Rielly and Travis Dermott were caught battling a Blues for the puck in the corner while killing a penalty, allowing Ryan O’Reilly to waltz free into the slot, snapping the 3-0 shot through Freddie Andersen’s legs.
Down 3-1, Babcock pulled Andersen early yet again, leaving the Toronto net undefended with just over three minutes left in regulation, and a few ticks left the added window opening of Jaden Schwartz (not to be confused with Jordan Schmaltz, we love these names) taking a hooking penalty.
The Leafs buzz-buzzed the net but, nope, nothing doing and then, short-handed, simply trying to heave the puck out of the zone, Ivan Barbashev got it right on the vacant net button for the 4-1 empty-netter.
“St. Louis came in here to play hard. They were on the inside, they backchecked, they worked hard. We stayed on the outside, never got the puck to the net, never got inside. In the end, they competed harder in the hard areas. We turned the puck over and weren’t good enough.”
Over his shoulder glance from Babcock, to the Toronto’s whizz-bang opening fortnight.
“We scored early, we scored easy, it was pretty loose, everything was great. Now we’re finding out it’s the NHL. It’s hard to score. Teams compete hard. Teams adjust.
“So we’ve got to get our mojo back. We’re not good enough.”
Toot-toot. The fun police has spoken.
By the by, bye-bye Bozak. The Blues don’t come back to Toronto this year.