After a season in which they became a very disliked hockey team in these parts, a team that seemed to dishonour a uniform that has seen more than its share of dishonourable moments over the past five decades, the Maple Leafs started this season with a simple game plan.
Try to be liked again. At the very least, my goodness, be liked.
Baby steps. Work back to respectability. Let other clubs, like the Montreal Canadiens, shelter loftier goals. Let teams like the Edmonton McDavids imagine their day has finally come to be very good again.
Not the Leafs. Baby steps.
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So you start the season on home ice by saluting the fans at centre ice, a very obvious apology for the nonsensical Salute-gate episode of last year. You acknowledge Borje Salming and have Doug Gilmour award a jersey to a member of the military, and you pay tribute to the Blue Jays and their return to post-season play with a video segment on a big, shiny new scoreboard set to a stirring Freddie Mercury tune, and then show Marcus Stroman, Russell Martin and others in attendance.
The basics. Don’t roll over and quit because the other team scores first. Block shots, battle. Cheer for the local nine. Represent the 416.
If fans go home disappointed, that’s the nature of the game, but don’t send them home disgusted.
“Let’s see if we can’t maximize this group,” is how new coach Mike Babcock, the biggest star this team has, put it after the morning skate.
All of those things happened on opening night, which means a 3-1 loss to the Canadiens wasn’t a moral victory, because they don’t give those out in the NHL, but it was a starting point. There was industry and there was team play, and there was also the reality that this team is going to have a very tough time scoring goals this season.
The opening night assignment seemed daunting and, frankly, a little unfair. Put the Leafs, a team that couldn’t score in the second half last season when they still employed sniper Phil Kessel, up against Carey Price, probably the best goalie on the planet, the guy who helped Babcock win Olympic gold in Sochi last year.
At the end of the night, however, while you might not say the Leafs were necessarily the better team, Montreal sure wasn’t. What the Canadiens have is Price, markedly better than anyone the Leafs can put in the blue paint, and his 36 saves helped the Habs begin their season with a divisional triumph.
“That’s just a day’s work for him,” said an admiring Babcock afterwards.
The Leafs actually came out in fine form, outshooting Montreal 5-0 in the first three minutes of the game. But then Jonathan Bernier coughed up a bad one to new Habs captain Max Pacioretty, one he shouldn’t ever surrender, and the Leafs would never be better than deadlocked in the game.
Earlier in the day, visitors to the Leaf dressing room saw stalls dedicated to Red Kelly, George Armstrong and Johnny Bower, a new twist, a new motivational gimmick even if some of the current Leafs couldn’t tell you a single thing about any of those players. The Babcock/Lou Lamoriello regime is trying a bunch of new things, from nutrition to science to discouraging beards, to try and create a new dynamic.
Daniel Winnik, a 30-year-old journeyman who hails from the Toronto area, came back for more of the Leaf “experience” this season after signing as a free agent in the summer of 2014, then being traded to Pittsburgh at the trade deadline.
Why, other than the obvious, a guaranteed two-year contract?
“As a Toronto kid, if I could be part of trying to revive this team, which is kind of down in the dirt right now, that would mean a lot to me,” he said. “I love the city, and this team has treated me with a great amount of respect.”
So what, Winnik was asked, is the expectation here? Last season there was hope of a playoff spot in training camp, and more hope when the team was in a playoff spot in late November, but what is there to imagine this fall?
“It’s not hope. . .it’s. . .improvement,” said Winnik. “Getting better as individuals. Getting better as a team.”
Some things, you should know, went the Leafs way on opening night. A Nazem Kadri shot glanced in off James van Riemsdyk’s skate early in the second to tie the game 1-1, Bernier made a series of good stops, and Jake Gardiner save a goal with a quick left skate.
Babcock, meanwhile, won the first coach’s challenge in NHL history. Montreal’s Jeff Petry had scored, but without the officials noticing Tomas Plekanec had clubbed Bernier in the head with his stick. The goal was waved off after replay review, righting an egregious wrong in the way the new rule was intended, and the Leafs in that way, at least, made history.
Both Gardiner and Morgan Rielly, meanwhile, had flashes of excellence, but the way in which both seemed to go off-script in the latter half of the second period symbolized how the team in general struggled to patiently keep working the puck and gaining offensive zone time as it had in the first half of the game.
It’s like they didn’t, and don’t, yet believe this formula presented by Babcock will actually achieve something. No one should be surprised this isn’t a confident group.
The Habs did get that second goal in the third period, a goal scored because the Leafs didn’t clear a loose puck and four men in blue chose not to knock down Alex Galchenyuk. Moments before that, Nick Spaling had Price down and out but missed the net, and soon after Galchenyuk’s goal Peter Holland was sent in alone but couldn’t score.
The Leaf coach acknowledged Price’s excellence, but didn’t let his forwards off the hook entirely.
“You don’t have much time, but you have more time than you think,” said Babcock. “Bury it.”
Now the Leafs dive right into the NHL grind, going back-to-back with Detroit on Friday and Ottawa on Saturday. What they did on opening night was set a tone of hard work, but it’s completely unknown whether this group can sustain that for another game, let alone a season.
Still, they sent their fans home disappointed, but not disgusted. A baby step forward.
