Growing pains have become ongoing pains
In the end the Maple Leafs played Rorschach Test hockey, and you saw what you wanted to see. At times they were dominant, in single games or over weeks and even a month. At times they slipped badly, and had to make up for it.
And after bombing out before the playoffs even began, and after three previous first-round playoff exits, the organization met the media Wednesday to spill its guts. Mistakes were admitted; regrets were aired. But the president expressed faith in the general manager and the coach. The president and the GM — and the most experienced veterans, for that matter — expressed faith in the core and the system. The best player vowed this team will break through.
Asked if it’s possible that the Leafs have misjudged the potential of this group, GM Kyle Dubas said, simply, “No.”
“It’s not a dream, in terms of how we can play, because we show it,” Dubas said.
“There’s going to be changes every year, but we really do believe that the core guys certainly want to make those changes and get over that hump,” team president Brendan Shanahan said. “I think our potential and our potential for growth is even greater than it was a couple years ago, so I’m confident we’re going to get it done.”
OK, so they’re pot-committed, at the least. The biggest chips, and philosophical shift, would be to trade one of wingers Mitch Marner or William Nylander.
Marner, at $10.9 million (U.S.) per year, has four goals and eight points at five-on-five in 25 career playoff games. “The first game (against Columbus this year), I wasn’t engaged at all, in the physicalness of play, at all,” he said. Nylander, at $7 million, has produced three goals and 10 five-on-five points in the same span.
Auston Matthews is a monster, and John Tavares has a no-move clause. Marner and Nylander are the big chips. But Dubas, citing Marner’s work ethic and talent, slammed criticism of the winger. And in fairness, Marner’s playoff numbers partly reflect how he and Tavares and Zach Hyman played Boston’s best line in hockey to a draw last spring.
Dubas also said Nylander is still getting better, and that the Leafs’ supporting cast scored more than the supporting cast of Boston and barely less than Tampa Bay, beyond those teams’ highest-paid foursomes.
But without moving one or the other, they’re pruning around the edges. And that’s easy to understand, in a way. The core four are 22, 23, 24 and 29 years old. The Leafs got 152 shots on goal at even strength against Columbus, and three went in. They lost Game 5 to a goalie who made 85 saves in his next game. Hockey.
But Dubas also said that people seem to think he only has one approach as a GM, when in fact he’s an agile thinker. Shanahan admitted they needed more grit. Maybe the additions of Jake Muzzin and Kyle Clifford won’t seem so out of step with the program.
But the big decision is whether to stick with the big guys, and barring a Seth Jones-forRyan Johansen trade, which Dubas noted was a unicorn, it’s the logical path forward. Muzzin said maybe part of the failure was mental, sure, and Marner said the first round might be in their heads a little. Almost everyone used the word mindset, and basically admitted that this team doesn’t pay enough attention in the regular season because their talent’s superb, and it adds up when the games get tough. And that rests on the best guys.
“I think (Matthews, Marner and Nylander) are just going to continue to get better, and the value that we’ll get from those contracts will continue to be strong,” Dubas said. “And John (Tavares) is John. He’s been one of the best players in the league for over a decade now and will continue to roll along.”
So it’s up to the core seven, really: Matthews, Marner, Tavares, Nylander, defenceman Morgan Rielly, Dubas, and Keefe, who outsmarted himself in Game 5 in loading up the top line. Everything else is negotiable, and that’s how this thing rises or falls. Dubas might be wrong. Maybe he’s missing that Marner might almost hunger too much to be great — it sounds odd, but pushing too hard in hockey can be its own problem — or that Nylander doesn’t quite hunger enough. Maybe this team has already missed its best window because neither the philosophy or its stars was appropriately mature.
But for now, the team seems fixed in its convictions, and the players, too. They may even be right.
“The perception of how things are going or how the team’s been perceived or whatever’s outside of the locker room is a lot different than what we believe in,” said Matthews, who was Toronto’s best player all season long. “Obviously, the results in the playoffs and whatnot haven’t shown. But with the players we have on this team and the core group we have, being together for four years now, we really believe that we’re right there.
“And I gotta be honest, we don’t really care what other people think, or how far away people think we are, or the article that they’re gonna write about all the things that we need. I think we believe in our management and in our staff and in the players on this team and in this organization, that we’re gonna power through this adversity, and we’re gonna break through eventually.”
“It sucks,” Hyman said. “We’re building towards being in a position where it’s going to stop sucking, and we’re going to be able to win rounds and be able to put ourselves in a position to make a run and win. I think that’s the goal. But in the short term, it sucks, and it’s gonna suck for a long time.”
That’s the song of 2020, and it’s the song of the Maple Leafs. Being a team that needs to be embarrassed before it can be at its best is not a solid business model. It is, however, theirs.