Rest, rust or adversity: What are the right conditions to be playoff ready?

We’re really good at prescribing retroactive narratives to events in sports, aren’t we? We’ve all decided, for example, that the reason the Presidents' Trophy-winning Tampa Bay Lightning lost to the Columbus Blue Jackets in round one of the 2019 playoffs was because “They hadn’t faced adversity all year.” That’s just an agreed upon fact of what happened in that series to a team that had 126 regular-season points. Tampa lost Game 1 after having an early lead, were sent reeling, and never recovered emotionally, apparently.

So should a team try to create adversity? How much, and how recent, qualifies as enough “adversity” for us to believe a team can have post-season success?

I ask about “recency,” because that group had certainly seen its share of adversity. That same core group of players — Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov, Victor Hedman, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Ondrej Palat, Alex Killorn, Brayden Point and more — had been through the ups and downs of making the Conference Final the previous season. All those guys, save for Point, were there for their run to the 2016 conference final and when they went to the Cup Final in 2015, after beating the Rangers in a seven game conference final despite initially falling behind them in the series. It’s safe to say they’d been through some adversity and their core would’ve known how to handle it.

Maybe they just had some bad luck and got out-goaltended?

Or maybe the previous adversity wasn’t recent enough. That’s one of the few potential hiccups I’ve heard bandied about for the Boston Bruins' Cup hopes this spring — that it’s been too easy so far. Unfortunately, I’m not sure there’s a way to create an environment where you organically experience some hardship, you’ve either had some bad dips or you haven’t, and personally, I’ll take the team that consistently wins.

Another debate about teams being in peak form that we discuss each playoffs is “rested vs. rusty,” and with that, I’ve got this tweet from Tom Gulitti from a couple years back embedded in my brain. It’s a look at how rested teams — and therefore potentially rusty ones — have fared versus teams coming in off an exhausting battle of a series.

As you can see, the team that’s just kept on fighting has had a lot of success.

Since this tweet was posted, a team coming off a sweep has played a team coming off a seven-game series twice more, and once again the seven-game team beat the sweep team in 2021 (Vegas beat the Avs in this case). Though, Tampa Bay did follow up their sweep over Florida by beating the Rangers in 2022, who had just won a seven-game series.

The point is, six of the last seven times this has happened, the "rusty" team lost to the one that just kept playing, which is enough to make you think.

I co-host a Toronto Maple Leafs show, so in thinking about these factors for the Leafs: how do you want to enter a first-round series versus Tampa Bay? If you have the chance to rest your star players, should you? Or do you want them to stay on the treadmill of the season for the fear that getting back on the moving surface is a bigger challenge than maintaining your pace?

This debate about what’s best for a team is relevant with Leafs/Lightning because in the final week of the season the Lightning will play just three games, while the Leafs have five on the docket. You wouldn’t think playing more games would be preferred, but recent history tells us it sure wouldn’t qualify as an excuse.

So how should the Leafs handle their unique march — and knowing your opponent this far out is unique — towards the playoffs?

Obviously you can’t create your own adversity, but like the Tampa Bay example, that’s already been provided to the Leafs in their previous post-season failures. It starts there for the core of any team. But further to that, the Leafs started the season in a way that made us think the coach and the GM might not make it to Christmas. Their star player, Auston Matthews, has dealt with some injury issues and has had a comparatively underwhelming season. Their D-corps was riddled with injuries for a stretch of the season. The trade deadline added six new players to the roster and has them scrambling to put together the best version of their group.

They’ve had a few hurdles along the way.

I do think that every team, every year, has to go through certain complications though, so I’m less sold on “adversity” being an important factor for a given group.

I do believe that rest matters though, particularly for older guys, but I don’t want my best players sitting on their couches for the final games of the season while the team is trying to round into form. That means the best time to rest is now.

For the Leafs, who are on a tough road trip, they got Morgan Rielly a night off on Thursday, and as they play in Carolina and Nashville Saturday and Sunday the should be looking to rest some more key pieces. John Tavares is a perfect rest candidate, Mark Giordano could use another night off, and I’d even consider Mitch Marner and Matthews. They’re the horses you’re going to be leaning on for the biggest games, which are less than a month away.

It’s not often you’re in a spot like the Leafs are — where they know both who they’ll be playing, and likely that they’ll be starting at home — so it’s up to them to utilize this rare advantage. Tampa Bay has that knowledge, too, so they’ll be setting out to do the same.

As I said off the top, it’s easy to look back at a team that loses in round one and say they were tired, or it was adversity that got to them. The question for teams is how to best prepare themselves, and leave the fewest excuses possible, to have success in round one?

Without a perfect formula, it seems to me you can only do a few things. Rest now and get rid of the rust in the final few games. Lean on previous experiences and don’t forget the lessons learned.

The ramp-up period to the post-season has begun, and how teams are positioned now dictates just how much they get to focus on Game 1, rather than just getting in.