It was two years ago that the Ontario Soccer Association decided to get serious about development.
For all soccer players under the age of 12 in Ontario (both boys and girls), teams are no longer keeping track of the score in a game. No more standings, winners or losers. The total focus is on skill development. Try something different and the ball’s in your net? No matter. They want you to try something different! If it doesn’t work, fish the ball out of your net and try again.
For parents and coaches willing to embrace a new way to look at a sport, it’s been a marvelous success. For those who aren’t, the whining still hasn’t stopped. After all, how can you judge progress without a winner and a loser, right?
In a different way, what’s happened with the OSA is precisely what is happening with the Toronto Maple Leafs. (Yes, the analogy is an ambitious one, but work with me here.)
It’s not that the Leafs don’t care about winning any more. Everybody’s keeping score, and the 2-8-2 record is, while expected, ugly.
It’s just that — right now, anyway — they don’t care about winning above everything else, and there’s a difference. They’re no longer willing to do anything — to take whatever shortcuts might be available — just to win tonight and next week.
Brendan Shanahan and Co. have heard the “we’ve waited long enough, for crying out loud” refrain, and, like the OSA with sour parents, they’re just not listening to it. Or perhaps they’re listening, and then ignoring it.
Nobody’s getting fired here, after all. For the first time in a decade, we haven’t gone into a season in Toronto thinking this coach is in trouble if things don’t go well, or that a GM may be pink-slipped if the club sinks into a long losing streak, or the star player is either headed out of town or wants out.
There are no untradeable players on the roster, but at the same time, there won’t be upgrades or a major overhaul simply in response to the team’s win-loss record.
But after 12 games, including Wednesday night’s 4-2 loss to the Winnipeg Jets, you’re starting to see the faint outlines of a foundation.
Against the Jets — and two nights earlier in a solid win over Dallas — the Leafs took on two vastly superior Western Conference clubs and fared reasonably well despite a significant discrepancy in talent.
The Leafs aren’t big, they’re not talented, they lack elite goaltending and they don’t have a sprinkling of flashy snipers who must to be watched. Nikolaj Ehlers had more razzle-dazzle on his own last night than the entire Leafs team.
But what the Leafs are slowly but surely becoming is a more systematic team, a more organized team, a more diligent team.
Wednesday night was probably the best they’ve done all season at playing the same game shift after shift, whatever the scoreboard read. They ground out the contest as best they could, hanging in there even as the deeper Jets gained more and more offensive zone time as the third period progressed with the game tied 2-2.
With 14 minutes gone in the third, James van Riemsdyk stormed in with a chance to give the Leafs the lead, but was denied by Ondrej Pavelec. The Leafs then had a power play when Alexander Burmistrov was sent off for holding Leo Komarov’s stick, but that backfired when Burmistrov got the puck coming out of the penalty box.
Along with Blake Wheeler, Burmistrov then executed a pretty two-on-one maneuver around Jake Gardiner for the winning goal, a vivid illustration of the kind of skill and confident finish the 8-4-1 Jets have and the Leafs do not.
The result, on it’s own, told only the story of another Leafs defeat. But understand, the concept is to build a predictable, sustainable style of play, so when William Nylander and Kasperi Kapanen arrive this year or next, or when Mitch Marner arrives down the line, or if Jimmy Vesey decides to leave Harvard, spurn Nashville and join his brother Nolan and his dad Jim with the Leafs, they’ll know exactly how they’re supposed to play.
If you’re just watching the standings or not really watching the Leafs at all, you’ll look at their record and think not a whole lot has changed since Peter Horachek was helpless to stop the club driving into the ditch last season.
And you would be wrong.
Much is changing. Just not things you can detect by looking at a simple scoresheet.
When this Leaf team loses the puck, for example, it now chases it down like a group of irritated worker bees. And everyone does it. Nobody’s on a special program, allowed to leave the difficult chores to others.
The team’s breakout is improved. People are more often than not in their correct places, the puck is moved crisply, the zone is exited.
As a group, the team is much better at shielding opposing players from the net, although it needs to get better yet. In other words, while defending, there’s a whole lot less puck watching going on.
Now, compared to the big numbers, like goals for and against, these things we’re talking may seem like relatively small potatoes. Moreover, they’re not significant enough issues to overcome a team PDO (combined shooting percentage and save percentage) that’s among the worst in the league. If you can’t score and don’t get the saves, the little stuff won’t help nearly as much.
But in a situation where winning isn’t being put above everything else, there is measurable, meaningful progress. The Leafs may not lead the NHL in fighting majors like they did en route to a playoff berth three years ago, and they don’t have a dangerous top line like last fall when JVR, Tyler Bozak and Phil Kessel were tearing up the Eastern Conference, but nonetheless they’ve become one of the league’s better possession teams.
Sitting in the ACC the last two games, you get a sense the fans aren’t quite certain what to make of what they’re seeing. Many aren’t sure whether this is just a bad team, or it’s the beginning of something.
But what started out as stunned silence on opening night has at least graduated to a frequent murmuring of approval at the overall effort of players like Nick Spaling, Shawn Matthias and Matt Hunwick, with occasional “Go Leafs Go” chants.
There’s nothing to roar about here yet — that’s quite clear. This team won’t be climbing up the standings too far, and may not win 25 games. Or 20.
But that’s not how the organization is keeping score right now.
