A tougher team faces a tough task
Playoffs promise to be difficult, but addition of deadline beef gives Leafs a puncher’s chance
There’s really only one question out there for Maple Leafs fans: Is there a chance?
Sure, there’s a chance. It’s sports, there’s always a chance. At the same time, you’d be hard-pressed to find a respected prognosticator (or a hockey person not currently in the employ of Toronto’s NHL organization) to confidently predict the Leafs will be lifting the Stanley Cup in a few months.
Some might have boldly suggested it in October. But in October, there’s a best-case scenario for everyone, right?
Here we are in mid-March and three teams — Florida, Boston and Vancouver — have, for the most part, distanced themselves from the pack. Vegas, as defending champion, also will get a lot of support for a possible repeat, particularly after a strong trade deadline fueled by use of the long-term injured reserve.
But the Leafs? Good team. A likely Cup winner? Few independent voices are on that bandwagon.
Still, there’s a chance that over the next 40 days the Leafs will: a) stay healthy; and b) embrace this roughand-ready personality that general manager Brad Treliving clearly has had in mind since he succeeded Kyle Dubas last summer.
Dubas might have acquired one of two of Max Domi, Tyler Bertuzzi, Simon Benoit, Ryan Reaves, Connor Dewar, Ilya Lyubushkin and Joel Edmundson. Indeed, he did acquire Lyubushkin the first time he played for the Leafs, in the winter of 2022. But Dubas, now mismanager of hockey operations in Pittsburgh, wouldn’t have acquired them all on the same team; Treliving has.
The Leafs are brawnier than they ever were under his predecessor. Better? There’s no evidence of that. Not yet.
But you saw last week in Boston how the Leafs intend to confront either the Bruins or the Panthers, their likeliest first-round opponents: start with two Jake McCabe crosschecks and don’t go down without a fight. If NHL officiating is garbage again this spring, the Leafs may have built the right kind of group.
Now you or I might recognize the fact that the Leafs lost to Florida in the playoffs last spring because goalie Ilya Samsonov got hurt, the Toronto offence didn’t come up with more than two goals in any of the five games and Panthers netminder Sergei Bobrovsky played out of his mind. But there are enough people out there who always ask whether the Leafs are tough enough when they lose, and the answer is always that they’re not.
This Toronto team is tough enough now, but perhaps in the same way Treliving ’s Calgary teams were always tough enough but just didn’t win anything. To play and win with a glove constantly in your opponent’s face, as Florida does, requires officials who look the other way, good goaltending, strong penalty killing and 18 skaters who play every game as if the other team said something nasty about their mother.
The Leafs, clearly, aren’t there yet. Samsonov has bounced back from an early-season slump very well. The penalty killing, however, is mediocre on a good night, which is partly why Dewar was brought in last week.
In terms of a teamwide pack mentality, you might get two-thirds of the roster playing with a snarl on any given night. But groups of players including Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander don’t believe in payback or pushback. To be the kind of team Treliving wants, you can’t have conscientious objectors. Or even nice guys. Everybody has to participate. Your least forceful player must appear ready to engage physically with an aggressive opponent, at least long enough for reinforcements to arrive. When you watch Florida and see Sam Reinhart in the middle of scrums, you understand the kind of buy-in necessary if this is your plan.
This is what Treliving wants. So, coach Sheldon Keefe has about six weeks to instil this mentality in his team. Keefe played that way himself; it’s not a reach for him. Competition for lineup spots will help in this regard. While Keefe is doing that, it will have to be decided whether Samsonov or Joseph Woll will start in net in the post-season — hard to imagine it’s not Samsonov at this point — and the big-money boys up front have to make sure the NHL’s second-best power-play unit stays lethal in the playoffs.
Given that the Leafs aren’t widely regarded as a Cup favourite despite a strong run in which they’ve won 11 of 14 games, you could make the argument that if Keefe is able to tick all of these boxes and ice an effective, ornery group next month, Toronto might be one of those teams that higher-ranked squads would prefer to avoid. If Samsonov stays solid, Matthews continues to be the best goal scorer in hockey and the Leafs play with consistent sandpaper, they could be trouble for a team weighed down by expectations in a way the Leafs are not.
But those are all significant ifs, aren’t they? We’re back to best-case scenarios, just like in the fall. That said, of the 16 likeliest playoff teams only Vegas, Colorado and Tampa Bay really know they can win it all, because they’ve done so recently enough that they still have the taste of champagne in their mouths. Everyone else has put together the best group they can and hopes for the best, or to at least take another step forward.
Toronto, ninth overall as of Sunday, hasn’t been a top-five team all year. It now comes down to how Keefe gets this team to think, behave and believe over the next six weeks. It’s got to become a team that believes it can go nose-to-nose with Florida or Boston and win a physical test, allowing its talent sufficient room to breathe.
If you believe they can become that team, then sure. There’s a chance.