TORONTO – The text arrived unsolicited from a member of another NHL team’s front office.
“I’m saying it now – the Leafs are going to be better than people think this year.”
It’s a matter of considerable debate even within the confines of the home dressing room at Air Canada Centre. For as much as coach Mike Babcock wants to raise the expectations around his group, he also looks at the roster and has to be realistic about the growing pains a young team is bound to endure.
“Don’t get me wrong – I love our kids,” Babcock said Thursday. “We’ve got great kids. But they’re kids.”
They should be eminently more exciting than the team that skidded to 30th overall last season. That was a workmanlike bunch – a surprisingly structured bunch – but at the end of the day it was a group of players who didn’t do a good enough job of creating offence once they had the puck.
Now, we are winding towards the end of a training camp where Babcock is trying to determine if the right-hand shot on Auston Matthews’ wing should be William Nylander or Mitch Marner.
When you’ve been where the veteran coach was a year ago, it’s a good problem to have.
Suddenly he’s molding a lineup brimming with skill, speed and youth.
The Leafs also feel they’ve made gains in goal with the acquisition of Frederik Andersen and Jhonas Enroth, and hope that Russian free agent Nikita Zaitsev and holdover Jake Gardiner can log big minutes behind Morgan Rielly on the blue line.
You can certainly begin to see the shape of something forming here. The “build” part of the “rebuild” is underway. That no doubt plays a role in the growing view being formed on the Leafs from afar.
A telling moment during the recent World Cup came when Boston Bruins winger Brad Marchand was asked about Babcock and spun his answer into a compliment of a division foe:
“You can see why Toronto really improved towards the end of last year,” he said. “You know they’re going to be a great team going into the future here.”
And yet, there remains some debate about how soon the future will meet the present. Prognosticators seem to be taking a dim view on the outlook for 2016-17, with ESPN picking the Leafs to finish last in the Atlantic Division and USA Today tabbing them to be in the Eastern Conference basement and 29th overall.
Even some veteran members of the team – players excited by the blowing winds of change – aren’t sure how quickly the results will arrive.
“You never know,” said Gardiner. “You don’t want to get too far ahead of yourself. We’ll see what happens. We’ve got some really young talent.”
“Once you get to the regular season, it’s a totally different animal,” said winger James van Riemsdyk.
They must first scale one final exhibition gauntlet, with three games in three days in three cities starting Thursday night in Montreal. A bookkeeper, rather than a hockey executive, must have concocted that itinerary.
The final roster decisions will be clear by the end of the weekend.
We already know that Matthews, Marner and Nylander have a spot locked up. Zach Hyman looks like a strong bet as well. Connor Brown, who had six points in a seven-game audition last March, is on the bubble.
The young players have each had their moments during exhibition play, but Babcock is stressing the importance of developing a will to match their skill. He thinks they’ve spent too much time playing with the puck on the perimeter of the offensive zone.
“They want points, these guys, and as they go and they get no points they’ll figure out where you get points,” said Babcock.
Nothing in his tone suggested that it would likely happen overnight.
So while there is a high level of optimism to be found around the Leafs these days – “I think anything’s possible really,” said centre Nazem Kadri – there are a few caution flags being raised as well.
Defenceman Roman Polak has a unique view on the situation after spending 18 months in Toronto before being traded to San Jose last February. He was part of the Sharks’ run to the Stanley Cup Final and returned to the Leafs as a free agent in the summer.
After experiencing really good and really bad last season, what does he see now?
“A lot of new, young faces – skilled forwards with the speed – we look pretty good,” said Polak. “I think we should be a little better.”
Some around the hockey world believe they’ll be even better than that.
