Out of rink, but not out of mind
Brendan Shanahan is an Olympic gold medallist, a Hockey Hall of Famer, a 656-goal scorer and a smart, tough customer. Choose your weapon, brain or brawn. At age 51, here’s guessing he’d still throttle the best of us in a rapid-fire exchange of either ideas or punches.
Beyond all those things, Shanahan is something else that’s rare: An analog man in a digital world. The president of the Maple Leafs, for instance, still prefers to mark his appointments in old-fashioned pen and paper rather than keeping them strictly on his phone. He does this knowing full well he’ll be the target of occasional mocking from the millennials in his front office, general manager Kyle Dubas among them.
But in the midst of this coronavirus crisis, as he has continued conducting Leafs business bunkered in his Rosedale home, even Shanahan was a bit surprised to discover he still owns a landline. Amazing what you can learn from a brief interruption in cell service in the midst of a pandemic.
“I had no idea where it was in the house, and I have no idea what the phone number is, but I found it,” Shanahan said in an interview. “And I made the call.”
Work-from-home conference calls with the NHL and its member clubs have become a big part of Shanahan’s day of late. But for all the questions hockey fans would love to have answered — Will the season resume? What form will it take? — Shanahan can’t say he’s presuming much. While he acknowledged the Leafs, like the rest of the competitors, have provided dates to the league office for potential competition stretching into July and August, the situation remains still too unpredictable for even educated speculation.
“What is true on a Monday is different on a Tuesday and evolved on a Wednesday,” he said. “The answer is, there are no answers right now.”
In the meantime, Shanahan said he’s been happy to see Toronto’s players viewing the interruption of the season as an opportunity for improvement. Never mind that skating isn’t on the agenda yet, that even small-group training remains a no-go, and that some players are residing without the benefit of substantial exercise equipment.
Shanahan said one player he talked with recently vowed to use his time in isolation not just to recover from the grind and heal various injuries, but to “make gains.”
To which a reporter suggested Shanahan surely must have been in communication with Zach Hyman.
Shanahan laughed, well aware of Hyman’s hard-won reputation as the most fastidious of Leafs.
“Actually, no. That’s not who it came from,” Shanahan said. “That’s actually coming to me from one of our (other) players. It shouldn’t come across as that’s what we’re telling them to do. That’s what our players are telling us they’re trying to do.”
In other words, there’s no need to raise the alarm that Auston Matthews, in the days before the travel bans kicked in, found his way back home to Arizona, where a previous extended stay led to scandal. The upside, from the club’s perspective, is that Matthews has been joined in Scottsdale by good pal Frederik Andersen, a pro’s pro.
Neither is Shanahan concerned that William Nylander is in Chicago with his brother Alex, or that Morgan Rielly is back home in North Vancouver, where he’s been making social media appearances with girlfriend and Olympic figure skating legend Tessa Virtue. Shanahan said the players who’ve left Toronto are, in general, “better equipped” to ride out the stoppage in their home cities.
“A lot of them have gyms in their homes. They’re set up better in many cases, not just for their physical well-being but, with a lot of support from family, for their mental wellbeing as well,” Shanahan said. “Most of them are in a place where they feel more comfortable in that sense.”
Out of town doesn’t mean out of mind. The strength and conditioning arm of the franchise is regularly communicating with players, lately holding online mobility classes to keep those ever-tightening skating joints from rusting out. The team’s medical and well-being staff are regularly checking in on players to ensure they’re of healthy body and mind.
And as for the group of players still in the GTA, among them captain John Tavares and Mitch Marner, they’re getting the requisite NHL pampering, including the daily delivery of a selection of gourmet meals.
It’s been more than two weeks since the Leafs actually played, breaking a three-game losing streak with an impressive 2-1 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning. But as much as that victory put the Leafs on a 95-point pace, firmly ensconced on the post-season bubble, Shanahan said he was heartened by his team’s penchant for such bounceback efforts.
“Speaking optimistically, when our backs were against the wall, I always thought the team responded in a really positive way,” he said. “The negative was: Why did we so often put our backs against the wall?”
That’s the crux of an existential question. And Shanahan’s go-to answer, for now, remains the collective lack of experience.
The chase of a certain kind of excellence was interrupted when the campaign was halted with Matthews stuck on 47 goals and 12 games remaining — his potential assault on Rick Vaive’s franchise record of 54 now moot.
“First and foremost, I would say Auston’s focus was correctly placed on team wins,” Shanahan said. “But the short answer is, with the kind of person he is and the motivation he has, he’s just going to come back and try and do it again. And I’ll add to that: He’s certainly capable.”
Shanahan spoke glowingly, too, of Kyle Clifford, the February addition and impending free agent who has expressed interest in returning to the club.
“The interest is mutual,” Shanahan said.
Negotiations will presumably be relegated to some digital platform or another, even if Shanahan said he prefers faceto-face meetings. You can be sure, mind you, that the team president will mark the date in ink on a hard-bound calendar.
“I just like to write things down,” Shanahan said. “Now what Kyle (Dubas) says to me is, ‘You can also do it on your computer, Brendan’ … But I’m just old school. I’m still a paper guy … All this new technology stuff, I’m having my kids help me out.”
So write it down, Toronto, albeit in pencil to be safe: The time and date remain unknown, but Shanahan and his players are proceeding as though the hockey season will return. And that when it does, they’ll be ready.
“While we rightfully focus on other things right now — the health and safety of our society, and of humanity — we also understand our place in our community,” Shanahan said. “Sports are important to some people, and hockey is important to some people. When we as a society get an opportunity to return some normalcy to our lives, it’s going to be very important that we play a part in that.”