Strife of Rielly is off-limits
If Leafs’ top defenceman is playing hurt, he will never admit it
It was an interesting coupling of head coach and No. 1 defenceman, the one that endured the past few Maple Leafs seasons between Mike Babcock and Morgan Rielly.
The self-assured bench boss and the selfless blueliner saw the world differently in so many ways. They had conflicting ideas on the importance of defensive details — if Babcock never stopped being a stickler, Rielly will never cease being an offence-first freelancer.
They came from divergent backgrounds — Babcock’s a country guy who grew up hunting moose in Canada’s hinterlands, Rielly’s a city kid from a prosperous family who calls pricey Vancouver home. When Babcock used to suggest to players get an off-ice hobby to escape hockey’s grind, the coach listed “watching the hunting channel” among his recurrent bits of advice.
Rielly, when this bit of Babcock-ian wisdom occasionally came up in interviews, would shrug.
“If you gave me a choice to kill an animal or not kill an animal, I would choose not to kill it. I would pet it and maybe try to adopt it,” Rielly once said. “The way my dad explained it to me when I was younger is that hunting is like playing a sport when only one team knows they’re playing.”
For all those differences, and for all the trying times Toronto’s NHL team has endured lately and eternally, when Babcock was fired in November it was notable that the ex-coach made specific mention of precisely one player in parting comments to TSN’s Pierre LeBrun: He mentioned Rielly.
“I can’t thank him enough,” Babcock said.
There’s a good reason for that, and it surely goes beyond Rielly’s status as the longest-serving player on the roster. When Rielly is on the team, he’s all about the team — unequivocally, wholeheartedly, undoubtedly. To use one of Babcock’s favourite phrases: He’s all in, if not locked and loaded.
You can quibble about his defensive acumen, sure — and there’s no better time than this week, when Connor McDavid’s ritual breaking of Rielly’s ankles in Monday’s loss to the Oilers has been playing on a loop coast to coast to coast. You can raise doubts about the ultimate viability of Rielly being deployed alongside fellow B.C.raised rover Tyson Barrie on Toronto’s top pairing. But if you’ve been paying attention to the way Rielly has operated since he was drafted by the Maple Leafs fifth overall in 2012, it’s impossible to question his commitment to the crest. In times bad and good, he’s been consistently elite.
All that said, this hasn’t been the season everyone expected from Rielly. Following up his breakthrough 2018-19,
wherein he threatened the franchise record for points by a defenceman — he fell seven points short of Ian Turnbull’s daunting 79 — Rielly is a long way off that pace after Wednesday night’s 4-3 shootout loss the Winnipeg Jets. With three goals and 26 points through the opening 45 games of this season, the 20-goal, 72-point season of a year ago feels like the work of a different player, one who finished a career-best fifth in Norris Trophy voting.
And in some ways, it is. Rielly clearly hasn’t been himself this season. But it was only on Wednesday that we learned, via a report from Jonas Siegel, that he has been managing an injury, something that’s been obvious to anyone who’s watched the games or noted Rielly’s occasional absences from practice in the name of self-maintenance.
Rielly was vague about the specifics — it was classed as a “lower-body” ailment caused by wear and tear. He said the holiday break has been good for it and that he’s beginning to feel better. And the Leafs can hope that’s not just their leader in ice time, averaging north of 24 minutes a night, talking through a stiff upper lip. Carlo Colaiacovo, the ex-Leafs defenceman now lighting up the airwaves on TSN 1050’s morning show, has speculated that Rielly is suffering through a sports hernia.
In this load-management era of pro sports, there’d be those who would insist it’d be best if the Leafs — whose odds of making the playoffs were running at 78 per cent on Wednesday afternoon, according to Moneypuck.com — gave their No. 1 blueliner an extended break if that was the case. Who cares about winning in January, after all, when this team is at a point in its ascension when it’s only going to be judged by its performance in April?
It’s a great idea, except Rielly won’t go for it. Since he debuted in the league at age 19 in 2013, Rielly has played 96 per cent of available games. He played in all 82 last season. He has played in all 45 this season. The man plays hurt, period. For a big-minutes defenceman nursing a nick, taking time off in January might seem like shooting fish in a barrel — the easy thing to do. But Rielly’s not much for easy pickings.
And that’s saying something. There have been plenty of reasons why Rielly might have spent the early part of this season giving less than everything. He couldn’t have been thrilled that he lost out on the team captaincy to John Tavares — a great candidate, sure, but one who’s been a Leaf for about 20 per cent of Rielly’s tenure and doesn’t boast Rielly’s track record of representing the franchise with captain-worthy grace. He probably wasn’t overjoyed that Tyson Barrie replaced him on the No. 1 power-play unit shortly after Sheldon Keefe arrived as Babcock’s replacement, but Rielly registered his support for the move all the same. He surely isn’t happy that, after leading all NHL blueliners in goals a year ago, he hadn’t scored a goal since Oct. 25 heading into Wednesday.
But he’s always been adamant about putting the team above all, about refusing to obsess about personal statistics. Last season, when his 12 points in Toronto’s first five games saw him surpass a mark previously held by Bobby Orr, teammate Mitch Marner called him “Moe Orr.” But Rielly barely smiled at Marner’s compliment.
“I’m not going to talk about personal stuff,” Rielly said. “I just don’t think it’s important. I think it’s more important we move on and start thinking about playing (our next opponent).”
With Rielly, that’s not just talk.
That’s talk backed up by a career’s worth of action.