A new benchmark for success
This team is talented but laughably fragile — maybe a coaching change can fix that
GLENDALE, ARIZ.— On the day they introduced Sheldon Keefe as the 31st head coach in Maple Leafs history, team president Brendan Shanahan and general manager Kyle Dubas wanted to clarify a few important things.
Dubas said he’s willing to stake his career on the way his team is built, never mind that it ranked 25th in the NHL in points percentage heading into Thursday’s game against the Coyotes. And Shanahan wanted it known that he’s aligned with his bespectacled protege.
“This is how I see a team should be built as well,” said the president.
That shared vision, they both explained in their way, is of an uber-skilled possession-based juggernaut that, as Dubas said, relentlessly comes at teams “wave after wave with the puck” and wins games after having “broken (the opponent’s) will.”
And as for defence? “When I say strong defence, I mean get the puck back,” Shanahan said. With Mike Babcock long flown home on a private jet chartered by the team, with the 56-year-old former coach no longer around to loudly impose his strong beliefs on the picture, this was a moment for Dubas and Shanahan to unfurl a new manifesto of Maple Leafs hockey. And so they did. Shanahan, while he was at it, scoffed at critics who’ve “too simplistically” insisted his team lacks toughness because it’s not big on fighting or hitting or intimidation.
“We define (toughness) to our players (as) winning battles and being mentally tough, making a mistake and not becoming weak or small because of it,” Shanahan said.
It was a swaggering display of smarter-than-thou bravado from two undoubtedly intelligent men. But it seemed to ignore something rather obvious. Contrary to Shanahan’s belief, the too-simplistic critics — at least this one — are well aware that toughness can be measured beyond fights and hits. And here’s what they’ve come to understand about the Shana-plan Maple Leafs: The team that’s won nine of its opening 23 games is a top-heavy, talent-stacked squad made up of too many laughably
fragile players who’ve shown very few signs of being particularly tough, either physically or mentally.
Now we’ll find out if a new coach can change that.
“We have a lot of work to do, just to renew the spirit of the team,” Keefe said.
That sound you heard was Babcock absorbing one of a handful of kicks to the cojones, this one delivered by his successor, on Thursday when Dubas failed to offer even a cursory thank you to the coach he’d outlasted. As much as everyone in Leafland involved paid lip service to the idea that Babcock wasn’t to blame for the team’s poor play, there were more than a few bits of communication to the contrary.
“I think that certainly from a players’ perspective, you could see the frustration in their eyes,” Shanahan said. “I really thought, even in our last game, that the players were working really hard. But there was sort of a belief missing in them.”
Instilling that belief is one of Keefe’s fortes. And certainly he arrived saying all the right things about the roster he’s inherited.
“My message to the players today is: I’m not focused on what this team isn’t, I’m focused on what this team is,” he said.
In other words, while Babcock was infamous for lobbying management for personnel changes, Keefe, the former Marlies coach and a Dubas loyalist, is committed to working with what he’s got. While Babcock was focused on turning goal-scoring savant Auston Matthews into a 200-foot menace — and transforming a high-octane roster into a lower-event, leave-no-doubt keepaway machine — Keefe seems more intent on unleashing the hounds as they are.
“He talked a lot about just playing free and feeling good about ourselves and our game,” team captain John Tavares said of the new coach.
You only needed to spend a few minutes with a Maple Leaf struggling through one of the ugliest crises in confidence in recent Toronto memory to see the effect of the change. At Thursday’s morning skate perhaps the biggest on-ice tweak was defenceman Tyson Barrie’s addition to the top power-play unit. With Morgan Rielly still manning the top of the umbrella formation, Barrie was stationed on the left flank, a right shot in one-timer position, while Tavares replaced the bounced Andreas Johnsson in the net-front spot. Barrie had been relegated to second-unit duty under Babcock, which seemed to neuter the upside of a player who scored about 47 per cent of his points as a heavily used fixture on Colorado’s power play during the previous two seasons. The defenceman could barely contain his post-skate glee.
“It’s a new lease,” Barrie said, hours before scoring his first goal of the season against the Coyotes. “I think guys are looking at it that way.”
If it rang odd that neither
Shanahan nor Dubas put the onus for improvement on Toronto’s players, certainly there were athletes who were treating the coaching change as a moment of self examination.
“I almost take it personally. We haven’t lived up to anything as a team or as individuals,” said goalie Frederik Andersen. “A lot of guys, we can do better. So it’s up to us to respond. I felt like s--- (when Babcock was fired). You never want to have, on your watch, a coach get fired. That’s a bad situation. It happens a lot in sports, but it doesn’t mean it’s OK.”
Indeed, this was a haphazard, ham-handed way to make a coaching change, especially considering the management group had been mulling it since Toronto’s loss in Game 7 against the Bruins.
“We understand it’s not an optimal time to have someone new to come in and run the bench or run the program,” Dubas said.
Dubas, though he heaped himself with blame for failing to ever discover “simpatico” with Babcock, wasn’t afraid to toss out pre-emptive excuses for Keefe, including the new coach’s lack of practice time. Added Keefe: “Results won’t necessarily be the focus.”
Please allow a too-simplistic critic to humbly suggest that, um, yeah they will. This ain’t the developmental leagues, young Sheldon. Results are always the focus. But not to worry. It won’t be a problem if Shanahan and Dubas are right about their team. If the Maple Leafs ultimately prove to be as tough as their architects insist, if all it takes is a new coach to transform fragility into resiliency, the good results will soon be coming in waves.