The first year of the Toronto Maple Leafs‘ rebuild has gone more or less according to plan.
The team has shed unwanted contracts, acquired draft picks and lost enough games to attain the highest possible odds of picking Auston Matthews in June should they lose to the New Jersey Devils on Saturday.
Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman was on Dean Blundell and Company Friday on Sportsnet 590 The Fan and spoke about how management must be quietly happy with how things have gone in 2015-16, despite their lacklustre record.
“It’s funny, Daren Millard last night in the pre-game with Nick (Kypreos) and I were talking about how has this season been for the Maple Leafs, and honestly, I think it’s been a perfect season for them,” said Friedman. “And by perfect it means, they’re going to finish probably 30th.”
“What else has happened? Their American Hockey League team has been fantastic – they’re probably the Calder Cup favourites heading into the playoffs – all of their good young prospects have gotten a chance to play in the National Hockey League with the exception of (Mitch) Marner, you look at some of their veteran players, (Morgan) Rielly’s taken a huge step this year, he looks like he’s a real stud on the blue-line and you feel a lot better about some of their other guys than you did at this time last year….
“I think as an organization even though you could finish dead last, you feel a lot better about yourself.”
The cloud of negativity that surrounded the Leafs last season appears to have been lifted as fans buy in to the management’s long-term vision.
That doesn’t mean the players themselves won’t come out hard on Saturday, as evidenced by their 4-3 overtime win against the desperate Philadelphia Flyers Thursday.
“They had every excuse in the world to lose that game, there were plenty of moments they could’ve fallen apart,” said Friedman. “In the second period, late in the third, overtime, they played hard. I know there’s probably a lot of fans saying, ‘What?’ But you got to give them credit.”
New Jersey will host the Leafs having lost four straight and six of their last seven games.
A Toronto win could see their chance of winning the draft lottery fall from 20 to 13.5 per cent (depending on whether the Oilers lose to Vancouver), and though Friedman says president Brendan Shanahan and general manager Lou Lamoriello would perhaps prefer a loss Saturday, they would never instruct players to throw a game for the sake of a draft pick, especially given all the young prospects that are currently in the lineup.
“You can never go out and tell your guys to lose,” he said. “And also when you have young players around, even if you’re a bad team, if they’re your future you can never ever, ever put them in a frame of mind where they think it’s OK to lose….
“So probably inside you’re saying, ‘I don’t mind if we lose to the Devils, but I don’t want my players thinking that.'”
