THE GOING RATE
Auston Matthews doesn’t sound like he’s dead set on breaking the bank with his next contract, which is good news for the Leafs’ future,
There was Mitch Marner, using his 170-pound body (as if ) to block three shots, a pair of them late in the game. There was Nazem Kadri getting his snarl in the face of Patric Hornqvist.
But mostly and memorably, lifting the crowd out of its seats a-roaring, there was Jake Muzzin rattling the bones of Jake Guentzel — Jake-on-Jake — with a Bobby Baun-style crunch that smeared the Penguin forward all over the boards.
We have not seen the likes of that all season, hereabouts.
The architects of this club didn’t attach much value to physicality when assembling the roster and jettisoning players who use their bodies as weapons. Figured speed and creative flair would define and elevate the Maple Leafs into the elite stratosphere.
Certainly that remains the Leaf leitmotif.
Belatedly, however, the brain trust must have, if reluctantly, acknowledged what had been widely observed by the hockey hoi polloi: Mettle matters.
Not fighting, of course, which has largely become extinct in the modern NHL. But putting some lead in your pencil, some sandpaper in your shifts, some thumping yin in your yang. It can’t all be pretty and splashy.
Don’t want to say the Leafs are a soft bunch, because that characterization makes the players go bonkers. Quite rightly, they insist that toughness can be measured in many ways and they’d rather overwhelm with their skill. But putting the body in play has always been, will always be, fundamental to the game. The Leafs had indisputably been lacking.
Enter Muzzin, whose 114th hit of the season on Saturday almost separated Guentzel from his senses; certainly aborted his entry into the offensive zone. Probably Pittsburgh — the league’s top hitting team, with 1,418 — had not expected that kind of impeding from a no-hurt opponent: 817 hits, 88 of them by Nikita Zaitsev, though few resonate in memory.
“Well, it’s not easy,” points out Morgan Rielly, who’s drawn the incoming Muzzin as partner on Toronto’s top-D pairing. “It’s not that you don’t want to hit, but it’s an art. It takes timing and it takes practise and (Muzzin) is really good at it. That’s why he does it.” A lost art around these parts. “Lots of players take penalties trying to hit,” Rielly says. “Look around the league, there’s not many who can do those big hits. The rules of the game have changed. It’s pretty difficult to time it just right so that you’re not called (for an illegal hit).”
And let’s be honest. It’s a two-way impact — most players would rather not absorb the bang and the attendant injury risk.
“The puck-carrier oftentimes is carrying more speed than the person doing the hitting,” Rielly explains. “For (Muzzin) to be able to do that and keep playing, stay on his feet, that’s impressive.”
Even an old-school coach like Mike Babcock seemed to have swallowed the management Kool-Aid about the redundant merit of big hits and finished checks, noting earlier in the season that reaching for the heavy contact can disrupt flow and cause puck turnover. Rielly concurs.
“You want to keep yourself in position. I think if you go out of your way to make those hits, often guys can jump out of the way or poke the puck past you anyway. It’s a puck-first thing, right? Ideally you want to get the puck and keep possession. You have to get a piece of the guy or he’s gone, the puck’s gone.”
Muzzin, playing his first game as a Leaf at Scotiabank Arena, might well wonder what all the fuss was about, the full-throat- ed appreciation of the Guentzel wipeout. It’s just how he rolls.
“For him to bring that to our team, it’s great,” says Rielly. “He did it for a long time in Los Angeles. That was just one of them. He did that every game when he was playing in L.A. and we’re looking forward to him doing it here. That’s a valuable piece.”
Asked specifically about the hit, Babcock broadened the scope on Muzzin instead. “Obviously Muzz is a big man.” Six-foot-three, 213 pounds, ZZ Top beard. “Not flashy, but he’s intelligent, calm, he’s got real good puck skills, got a good shot. But he’s a big body, plays really hard between the whistles and we don’t have enough of that.”
That’s not why the Leafs edged Pittsburgh 3-2, obviously. But, after a fitful 4-7-1 stretch and following Friday’s lacklustre loss in Detroit, this looked like a squad that had found its mojo again, stepping up its game, reasserting its quality — no, it hadn’t all just been a Maple Leaf mirage, that early-season glitter — and doing it with vibrancy, rallying from a 2-0 deficit.
Auston Matthews looked like Auston Matthews again, registering a goal for the third consecutive game, with a highflying Kasperi Kapanen restored to his wing. Rielly’s assist on Zach Hyman’s winner was his 52nd point of the season, matching last year’s career high. Toronto blocked 28 shots, led by a fearless Marner.
“It’s huge,” praised Patrick Marleau of Marner’s nerve. “The whole bench gets up. He had two there late in the game. We’re going to need a lot of that going forward. But to see him put his body on the line, it makes you look (at) yourself in the mirror. We should all take a page out of his book.”
Marleau would have liked what he saw in the mirror too. While there have been sniffs that the veteran has lost a step this season, he certainly appeared re-energized from an all-star break in the Turks and Caicos, showing bursts of speed and humbling Sidney Crosby in the faceoff circle, 9-5.
Zip on the inexplicably faltering power play, though, on the heels of 0-for-5 in Motown.
It is crucial that the Leafs build some momentum in this stage of the season, get a head of steam going to consolidate their bona fides in the standings and, for heaven’s sake, stop dropping gimmes to teams out of the playoff picture.
And bring the hurt.