Additions don’t change equation
Brodie, Simmonds, Bogosian should help, but it’s the core that will decide the direction
Depending on your outlook, therein lies the beauty or the beastliness of being a Toronto Maple Leaf.
When it all comes down to it, your underperformance can always be passed off as someone else’s fault. If you happen to crumble under the weight of expectation in the centre of the hockey universe, there’s always a well-worn excuse at the ready.
Tyson Barrie, the free-agent defenceman en route to Edmonton, made sure he tossed a couple out there Saturday as he met with reporters via Zoom after signing a one-year deal with the Oilers worth $3.75 million (U.S.). In the course of explaining what went wrong during his mostly lost season with the Maple Leafs, Barrie made a list.
Toronto’s media, he said, can be “tough.” Toronto’s fans “can be hard on you.” He declined to register the buckpassing hat trick by also crying about how Toronto’s ex-coach Mike Babcock could be really mean. Maybe Barrie was aware that, given how Edmonton GM Ken Holland and Babcock are lifelong pals, that particular bridge was best left unburned.
In any event, two scapegoats were more than enough. The dastardly media. The crazy fans. Apparently Barrie is of the belief that somebody, somewhere, is sympathetic to his plight.
Don’t get it wrong: Barrie has every right to his opinion. If he was being honest, there’s no doubt he would have laid a bigger chunk of the blame for what he called the “worst start” of his career at the feet of Babcock, with whom the go-go defenceman never meshed before Babcock was fired after 23 games. And, to be fair, Barrie, when he later elaborated on his feelings on Toronto’s press corps, softened his stance considerably.
“I didn’t find the media too critical on me,” he said. “But it was just the situation and how I started the year … and obviously a lot more cameras there.”
Heck, Barrie even raised the scant possibility that he might be at least partly responsible for turning his highly anticipated arrival in the Nazem Kadri trade into an all-round dud of a season — capped off by five pointless play-in games against the Blue Jackets.
“For sure it was certainly on me a little bit, the start that I got off to and the confidence kind of wavered,” Barrie said.
So, no hard feelings. Off you go. Enjoy Edmonton. Still, as you watched Barrie
leave town — this in the wake of the Leafs landing free-agent T.J. Brodie as Barrie’s rightdefence replacement — it was worth remembering the exuberance that surrounded Barrie’s arrival in Toronto an offseason ago.
It was worth thinking back to how last year — just like this year — the Leafs and a good chunk of their fan base were singing the praises of the changes they’d made on the blue line. Ron Hainsey, Jake Gardiner and Nikita Zaitsev had left town. Barrie and Cody Ceci had arrived. Morgan Rielly was coming off a career year. There was a vision that Travis Dermott, in the season to come, would turn into a top-four guy when he returned from injury. There was real hope that Toronto had gone a long way to solving its longlingering problem on the back end.
“By adding Barrie this afternoon and Ceci in the morning, we think that we’ve (remade the defence),” Leafs GM Kyle
Dubas told the media. “We really like where we’re at up front. And having Barrie and Ceci on D to pair with Rielly and Muzzin while Dermott works his way back, I really like where we’re at, and certainly think our team will be improved heading into next year, for sure.”
It didn’t turn out that way. And we were starting to see a pattern. Toronto’s blueliners, don’t forget, also didn’t live up to Dubas’s optimistic forecast of two off-seasons ago.
“I’m probably more bullish on our defence than others,” Dubas said in the summer of 2018. And if by “probably” he meant “erroneously,” his assessment of the situation stands as rock solid.
That’s not to say the acquisition of Brodie, on a four-year deal worth $20 million, won’t come attached to a better ending. Brodie’s track record suggests he’s got a chance to be a solid right-side partner to the left-side-favouring Rielly. It’s only to say that a year ago there were plenty of experienced NHL eyes expressing the opinion that Barrie would be a good fit, too. Brodie has made his name of late skating alongside Mark Giordano, he of the 201819 Norris Trophy. Maybe Giordano has been carrying him. Maybe Brodie has simply been an ideal foil to an explosive talent — one who’ll help raise Rielly to new heights in Rielly’s coming contract year. If recent history is any guide, you never really know until you see it on the ice.
What we do know is this: Brodie’s entrance is being feted in about the same way Barrie’s was an off-season ago. Ditto Wayne Simmonds, the $1.5million veteran purveyor of what Simmonds calls “functional toughness” — relentless scrappiness with a measure of statistical substance.
But let’s face it. Barrie didn’t make or break the Leafs in another failed season. It’s not likely Brodie or Simmonds or Zach Bogosian will make or break them in the coming campaign. Nor will the exit of Andreas Johnsson, whose Saturday trade to the Devils for minor-leaguer Joey Anderson cleared a cap hit worth $3.4 million. As Dubas has taken to pointing out, if the Leafs are going to eventually enjoy some success, they’ll need their best players to be better. Full stop. End of discussion.
“Yes, you can supplement around the core group in the roster. But in the end, your core guys absolutely have to be at their best,” Dubas told TSN radio this week. “I think our guys have been fine during the playoffs during the last number of seasons. You’ve seen some of them emerge at different times. But it’s really taking it to the next level knowing that they’re the core leaders of the team and that they’re setting the tone for the whole group in the way that they go out and play.”
In other words: On a topheavy roster, the top guys need to pull a heavier share of the weight. The pressure isn’t actually on T.J. Brodie to transform the blue line. It’s on the existing core to perform better, dastardly media and crazy fans be damned.