Miracle win may be push Leafs need
For a team that often seems to lack motivation, comeback a reminder of what’s on line
Now that the Maple Leafs have had an adrenaline-fueled night to revel in their unfathomable comeback, here comes the undeniable truth. It’s the nature of sports history that the Miracle of Game 4 only becomes iconic if the series gets closed out.
Legends aren’t built on playoff bow-outs. So just as Toronto’s star players delivered a flurry of goals to turn a 3-0 dying-moments deficit into a 4-3 overtime win in Friday’s Game 4, it’ll be on Toronto’s star players to seal the deal in Sunday’s decisive Game 5.
Win and the Leafs will be among 16 teams remaining in the hunt for the Cup. They’ll be winners of a post-season series, of a sort, for the first time since 2004. Maybe more important, they’ll be breakers of the recent franchise habit of underperforming when the stakes overwhelm.
Lose and the Leafs risk furthering their reputation as a talent-stacked tease of a team — one with an amazing tendency to perform dazzlingly when it’s pushed to the brink, yet somehow can’t seem to find a way to push itself over a finish line unprodded.
Maybe that’s unfair in some eyes. This has already been a zany opening week of competition in the NHL bubble, where the only thing that’s been predictable has been Columbus coach John Tortorella’s clockwork childishness in postdefeat media conferences. The NHL’s midsummer return to play is about mitigating the massive financial losses wrought by the coronavirus, and providing some welcome entertainment in the midst of a pandemic. But it’s certainly not about fairness. Consider the Pittsburgh Penguins and Edmonton Oilers, two of the four teams bounced from the bubble on Elimination Friday. Those two clubs spent a fivemonth regular season compiling the seventh- and 12th-best records in the league, only to be eliminated in best-of-five series by Montreal and Chicago, respectively — the eighthand ninth-worst teams, and playoff no-hopers before the shutdown. Neither the Penguins nor the Oilers were gifted anything resembling a home advantage for their regularseason superiority — just the randomness-infused reality of the wrong end of a short series. The losers’ only consolation now is a respective one-ineight chance at the No. 1 pick in the NHL draft lottery on Monday.
And maybe, for the Penguins, in a week that’s seen franchise cornerstone Sidney Crosby turn 33, that can be spun as a win. But for the Oilers and Leafs, whose best players are about a decade younger and infinitely less competitively decorated than Pittsburgh’s No. 87, the time is now. And this tournament, no matter its various inanities, is a proving ground, if not a conventional one.
“That’s when you find out who’s who,” Tortorella told reporters in a less trying moment before the series began, speaking of the kind of do-ordie hockey that’ll be played on Sunday. “This is an added pressure. And some guys just want it, and they revel in it. Other guys shrink … That’s mental, to me. That’s not physical. That’s a mental toughness, to be able to handle these types of situations.”
If Game 5 will be a test of mental toughness — not to mention the usual spin of the roulette wheel of bounces and puck luck and goaltending fortune — Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe also figures to turn it into a measure of his star players’ physical endurance. Keefe has been playing his best players like management is paying them: boatloads. Game 4 overtime hero Auston Matthews is averaging 25:41 a game in ice time. Mitch Marner is clocking 25:01. There isn’t a forward in the league that’s been getting more run since play resumed. Which, of course, marks a sea change in philosophy from Keefe’s predecessor, Mike
Babcock. Last post-season under the latter, Matthews and Marner averaged around 20 minutes a game, with Marner ranking 19th among forwards and Matthews 32nd. Two post-seasons ago — in the lead-up to a summer that required Babcock to make a house call to the Matthews abode in Scottsdale — Matthews ranked 58th and Marner 66th in average playoff ice time.
They’ve both justified the increased responsibility with some timely injections of skill and big-play wizardry. But they’ve also both been spotty presences in the opening four games. Whether that’s a function of the need to pace oneself in the face of a league-topping workload, or whether it’s the reality of playing big minutes against one of the best defensive teams in the league, their performances in this series will ultimately be coloured by Sunday’s result. Ditto Morgan Rielly, who has played an average of 28:19 a game, more than any bubble defenceman not named Seth Jones.
Columbus captain Nick Foligno, for his part, insisted his team’s late-game collapse wouldn’t “faze” its “resilient” group of players.
“I’m looking forward to making a good memory (in Game 5),” Foligno said.
Marner said the key for the Leafs is to avoid the self-inflicted damage that’s put them in difficult situations all season.
“We can’t beat ourselves,” he said. “We know that we can play a great defensive game when we put our minds to it — back-checking-wise, forechecking, not giving them a whole lot coming up the ice … That’s something we’ve got to have in our minds.”
This is a team, of course, whose collective mind has been known to wander. As veteran defenceman Cody Ceci explained back in January, in attempting to achieve teamwide buy-in on the defensive side of the puck, Keefe has long been partaking in a delicate dance.
“We’re still trying to eliminate the stuff we’re giving up … but you don’t want to bore the skill guys, either,” Ceci said. “(If the skill players are asked to play too defensively) they can fall into a lull like they’re not accomplishing much.”
Indeed, even with playoff advancement at stake, sometimes it’s as though the Leafs have needed to be snapped out of that lull and loudly reminded they’re in a hockey game that counts. Keefe can only hope the buzz of an all-time comeback — not to mention the burden of heavy ice time for the big guns — will keep that not-inconsequential fact top of mind come Sunday night.
The Miracle of Game 4 could sure use a mindful Game 5 from the Leafs to make the kind of good Toronto hockey memory that’s long overdue.