Babcock pleased with Leafs effort

What you have to understand is that Mike Babcock loved it. Loved it. You might have seen a game where the Toronto Maple Leafs played a Los Angeles Kings team that looks like it only scores by accident, and that must make Anze Kopitar feel, at times, like he’s back playing for Slovenia against the big boys. You might have watched a game where not a lot happened for long periods, where the high-powered Leafs utterly failed to blow a bad team out of the water. Which, in fairness, was true.

But Mike Babcock loved it. He really did.

“Well, I thought it was a tough night for every line,” said Babcock after Toronto’s 3-1 win. “There wasn’t a whole lot.

What you have to understand is that Mike Babcock loved it. Loved it. You might have seen a game where the Toronto Maple Leafs played a Los Angeles Kings team that looks like it only scores by accident, and that must make Anze Kopitar feel, at times, like he’s back playing for Slovenia against the big boys. You might have watched a game where not a lot happened for long periods, where the high-powered Leafs utterly failed to blow a bad team out of the water. Which, in fairness, was true.

But Mike Babcock loved it. He really did.

“Well, I thought it was a tough night for every line,” said Babcock after Toronto’s 3-1 win. “There wasn’t a whole lot. (The Kings) didn’t generate anything either. They had to throw it in, couldn’t get it through from the point, we blocked shots. Some people thought it was ugly. I thought it was beautiful.”If you wanted to know the biggest difference in vision between the general manager of this team and its head coach, that’s it. Babcock hates risk. He hates risk when he has a Team Canada stacked with so many elite centres he has to play them on the wing. His Platonic team was the Team Canada that won gold in Sochi in 2014, winning 1-0 over the United States in the semifinals in a perform does he find it beautiful? That’s why.

“Well, just because of the fact that we need to go through it,” said Babcock. “We need to figure out who we are, and the harder the game is the better it is. Now, would you like to win by a touchdown, everyone relax? Yeah, but we’re not getting anywhere by that. This is important to do because you give up one goal, you play well without the puck, goalie makes some saves, we didn’t play it on special teams, we had to grind. It’s good for them.”

His players came out and lauded how patient the Leafs had been. They did dominate puck possession in the first, even if little of it seemed like they were playing Los Angeles’s game. They fell behind 1-0 in the second after an Alex Kerfoot penalty; they scored the tying goal with Kerfoot pursuing the puck, hounding it, which is something this team doesn’t always do.

“Not really exciting for anyone to watch or play, but I thought we did a good job staying patient,” said defenceman Jake Muzzin, who was playing his first game against his old team and was back after missing one game with a charley horse. “Sticking to our game plan. And you know, we found a way to get two goals in the third from playing the right way and not forcing it. Just kind of playing structurally sound and then waiting for them to kind of make a mistake, and we capitalized on it.

“Sometimes you try to force plays or force skill plays, and if we work hard and play, and play solid, our talent will show when the opportunity comes.”