Don’t break this group up
Keefe and Marner are probably on the outs, but don’t tear roster apart
I’ve seen this movie with the Maple Leafs more times than I’ve seen “Casablanca.” Play it again, Shanny?
Counterintuitive as it may sound — eight times down this widescreen and stereophonic production, cue the snark — the short answer is: Yes.
The nut graph of this thing was a comment that Sheldon Keefe made in the grim aftermath of Saturday night’s overtime loss when asked if this core group will break through eventually.
“We’ve been talking about this for a long time, we’ve been trying to break through for a long time here now. So any answer is going to fall on deaf ears in that sense, and I get that. All I’ll say is that the way the group pulled together in this last week and through the season, this group was different this year.
“There’s a lot of good things happening, that happened in this series too, how it bought into a plan and found success, to give us a chance to compete here. We came up just short tonight but there’s reasons for me to believe that this team will win.”
They’ll likely have to do it without Keefe, which is a shame because he’s actually a good coach. He didn’t get outcoached in this series, although it took too long for a puckpossession DNA team — carry or pass the puck over the blue line — to adjust to the wide-out defensive wall the Bruins had erected through four games. But then the Leafs started to dump and chase and were rewarded with innumerable quality scoring chances.
That they couldn’t score enough, especially on their pathetic power play, is beyond fathoming. At the other end, well, that was a wrecking ball of a Game 7 overtime death blow — from the bad, hard bounce off the end boards to William Nylander lollygagging on the backcheck (David Pastrnak admittedly wasn’t his man, but still) to Ilya Samsonov’s misjudgment. Samsonov should have fallen on top of, knocked away or smothered the puck a couple of feet from the crease.
“I think I see he’s got some puck to the board. I look at the situation and I think it’s too far from me,” the goaltender said. “And, yeah, I tried to reach but he gets up puck a little bit and that’s it. Game over for us.”
Leafs Nation will judge the team on the sample size of the season and the series with Boston. And just about everybody will come to the what-now delirium lugging that protracted history of failure after failure after failure.
But the one-game sample, the game that punted Toronto, was just about beyond reproach. As were the two contests that preceded it. This was a lurching series where the Leafs didn’t have Nylander for three games, didn’t have Auston Matthews for two-and-a-third, and didn’t have their preferred starting goalie for Game 7.
All the stars misaligned yet the Leafs took it to seven games, rallying from a 3-1 deficit, and they surely put the fear of God into the Bruins. It became clear, as the minutes ticked away into overtime, that one mistake would decide it.
The bigger mistake now would be to imprudently tear it apart under pressure to do something. Because the Leafs aren’t broken. I’ve never seen a team in the Brendan Shanahan era more bonded, more fused together, the old gang and the recently affixed. Layman shrinks, armchair coaches, backseat GMs, smug pundits — not for nothing is it said of journalists that we come down from yonder high after a battle is over to shoot the wounded — everyone is demanding a radical fix for what purportedly ails the Leafs.
Which doesn’t mean, alternatively, rolling back the same cast next season. Reluctant as I am to pile on any individual athlete, Mitch Marner can’t remain with the Leafs going forward. When someone shows you who they are, believe them. Marner is too slight and too squeamish for the post-season combat zone, 11 career playoff goals and 39 assists notwithstanding. Moreover he’ll never get out from under the humiliating gif of that bench bicker with Nylander and Matthews. It will follow him around like a late afternoon shadow.
He’s a hometown boy but this hometown has had its fill of him. Perhaps Marner realizes that too and his agent will present general manager Brad Treliving with a list of teams to which he would waive his no-trade clause, a year away from free agency.
Brendan Shanahan has one year left on his contract. Over a decade — swallowing the Core Four Kool-Aid that Kyle Dubas poured, which malignantly disfigured the club’s salary structure and cap manoeuvreability — he’s delivered everything except a deep playoff run, much less a Stanley Cup. Believe me, that eats him more than it does you.
As a Hall of Famer, I’d take Shanahan over MLSE president and CEO Keith Pelley, a career suit, six ways from Sunday.
But Keefe was right. You don’t want to hear that now. Too busy bringing the thunder and fury, signifying nothing.
‘‘ All I’ll say is that the way the group pulled together in this last week and through the season, this group was different this year.
SHELDON KEEFE MAPLE LEAFS HEAD COACH