Mike Babcock has been talking up the significance of the 20-game mark for a couple of weeks now.
“What you try to do is you try to get out in the first 20, and you gotta try to get yourself established — you know what you are,” he said earlier this month. “And you also want to be in a good position so you’re not under duress.”
Duress, that is, for the playoff race.
The Leafs coach likes the 20-game barometer because “it gives you a handle” on your team. “And you can go back and say last year’s Stanley Cup winner doesn’t apply,” Babcock explained Wednesday morning, referring to the St. Louis Blues, in the dumps at midseason before winning it all. “OK. But in 20 games, you usually got a pretty good handle on what you are. I think for us, this year, it’s a little bit different in the fact that we had so many changes (in the offseason), and so we’re still getting to know each other a little bit. But I still think we got a pretty good handle on our people. But it’s taken us our full 20, without any question about that.”
Twenty games into the season and the Maple Leafs are what? Lost? Disjointed? Underwhelming? Fragile? Falling short of expectations? All of the above?
After 20 games, a team with legitimate Stanley Cup expectations, a team with as much pure talent as just about any other team in the league, hasn’t felt that way all that often. Something has been a little off all year long.
Is there even a signature win so far? The kind of victory that screams dominance or encapsulates what this team is and/or can be? Arguably, the most complete performance of the season came on Oct. 7 in a one-goal loss to the reigning champs.
More often, the wins have felt kind of hollow, missing the meatiness you might expect from a team with John Tavares, Auston Matthews, Morgan Rielly, William Nylander, Mitch Marner, Jake Muzzin, Tyson Barrie and Frederik Andersen on it. Is it a question of coaching?
The Leafs (9-7-4) are presently on a 90-point pace, which would’ve been well short of a playoff spot last year and falls well below the 100-point benchmark of the past two seasons. Their goal differential is an uninspiring +1. The Leafs were 14-6-0 at this point last season (a 115-point pace), with a goal differential (+19) that topped even the eventual Presidents’ Trophy-winning Tampa Bay Lightning. That team ended up with a respectable 100 points.
The Leafs pumped out 105 points the year before that. Two back-to-back 100-point teams for the first time in franchise history. Three in a row seemed like a slam dunk.
“We’re not where we want to be,” Tavares said after a disappointing 5-4 loss to the Islanders on Wednesday night. “I think we obviously want to play a lot better, a lot more consistent. We gotta keep working to find a way.”
(Dennis Schneidler / USA Today)
“OK, so they score,” Muzzin said of the goal that put the Islanders back in front 3-2. “We can’t let that kill the will in here or give them momentum. Mistakes happen. Goals happen. We’re fine. We’re playing good hockey. Let’s just continue. Let’s not panic, you know? I think we’re getting better at it — we gotta continue with it.”
“At times, I think it feels like it goes against us, and that’s just the nature of it,” Tavares added on the subject. “Sometimes that’s the way hockey goes, the way the games go, and you gotta just mentally stick with it and keep playing and keep trying to find a way to turn the tide and consistently up your level, up your consistency and get things snowballing in the right direction. We’ve had that for points of the year, but we haven’t really been able to sustain it as long as we’d like.”
The Leafs sounded like a team that was searching — for answers, reassurance, hope?
The only Cup winner on the roster, Muzzin seemed frustrated, if also hopeful about the team’s prospects.
“I think we have confidence in this group, in the team, in the room,” he said. “We’re just having some weird lapses throughout the game, and it’s costing us. I think we just have to be sharper throughout a full 60, shift to shift, more focused, with better preparation, I think, and we’ll come out on top in these games.”
Weird lapses like not getting the puck up and out in the leadup to the second Beauvillier goal, the one that made it 3-2. Or Andreas Johnsson turning the puck over on a failed drop pass to Nylander ahead of the first New York marker.
Earlier this month, Babcock said his team needed to figure it out “what we are.”
“We gotta know what we hang our hat on,” he said.
Asked what that was, Babcock responded: “Nothing. We’re still trying to figure it out.”
He continued: “We gotta find a game that we can bottle, or that’s our formula, that we can say, ‘This is what we do,’ and do it every day. So when we say, ‘This is what we do,’ we know what we do.”
What that is isn’t clear.
Who are the Leafs supposed to be? They haven’t been blowing teams away offensively, ranking 10th in goals per 60 minutes, usually hitting more with one-off quick strikes. And they certainly haven’t established themselves as a stingy defensive product at the moment.
Muzzin said that whole identity question could be found in the start of the game at Nassau Coliseum. The Islanders didn’t get their third shot on goal until more than 14 minutes had elapsed. The problem? They scored on it and added one more late in the period on a power play. Still, there was a solid, simple game there for the Leafs.
Of that start, Muzzin said: “We were quick in the zone, managed the puck through the neutral zone, we got on the forecheck. We’re not the most physical team, but we’re quick and hard, and I think when we do that, we’re a very good hockey team. It’s doing it for 60, 65, whatever it may be, every shift. You take a shift off, you give good players opportunities to score, they’re going to do it. It’s a battle of will. It’s tough to explain, but who’s going to wear the other team down the most at the end of the day? Who’s not going to make as many mistakes? We cut those little mistakes out, I think we win a lot more hockey games.”
What kind of identity did Tavares think the Leafs should establish?
“I think we have four deep lines that can skate, can be strong on the puck, and then can make plays and be strong at the net and be able to come at you wave after wave,” he said. “Same goes with our D-core. And I think we want to defend quick — be able to close lanes, time and space and get our transition game going the other way. It all kinda funnels together. When one link in the chain isn’t there, everything else is affected.”
A few things shouldn’t be lost amid the underwhelming results.
For one thing, the Leafs have newness all over the place. New to the mix this season: Cody Ceci, Barrie, Ilya Mikheyev, Nick Shore, Alex Kerfoot, Dmytro Timashov and Jason Spezza. Rasmus Sandin and Kevin Gravel, too. That’s a lot of unfamiliar players and personalities to incorporate into the group, a lot of people trying to find their way in a new environment, with new coaches and teammates, a new organization, a new city, etc., all of them doing it at once.
All that newness has meant little continuity from last season.
All three defensive pairs are new. Rielly is adjusting to Ceci on the top pair. Muzzin is getting used to a struggling Barrie (one point in the last 17 games).
It’s the same story up front, where not one line really emerged intact from last season.
Nylander and Johnsson played with Matthews a bit last year, but not for any sustained period. The Leafs’ best unit of a year ago, meanwhile, hasn’t spent a day together so far this season, what with Zach Hyman missing the first 19 games recovering from offseason ACL surgery, Tavares missing seven games with a broken finger and Marner now sidelined with a high ankle sprain until early December. The third and fourth lines have been mixing and matching all season as Babcock has tried to plug holes and find short-term solutions.
“We still haven’t put our lines together yet,” he said before facing the Islanders.
Don’t forget the two new assistant coaches, either, Paul McFarland and Dave Hakstol, each bringing his own philosophy to the table. Under their watch, the Leafs have made changes to their power play and penalty kill.
Another factor in the early-season blues: The stars haven’t exactly been stars.
Matthews has been just fine, scoring at a 53-goal, 107-point pace, and Nylander has come around of late — now with 11 points in the last 11 games. Marner wasn’t right before he got hurt, though, even if the numbers (18 points in 18 games) were there. Tavares had one of his better games of the year against his former team on Wednesday night — one goal, one assist, 64 percent expected goals — but he’s not played at last year’s standard yet. Nor has Rielly, even if, again, the numbers are there (17 points).
Andersen had only an OK October and currently owns a .912 save percentage. And where would the Leafs be if they had competent play between the pipes on those nights Andersen didn’t play, when Michael Hutchinson stumbled?
It’s just been a bumpy start a lot of different ways.
Consider everything that’s happened:
- Marner misses the start of training camp in Newfoundland because of a contract dispute.
- Marner agrees to a six-year deal with the Leafs worth over $65 million, arrives in St. John’s the following afternoon.
- Babcock hints that Spezza might not have a solid roster spot.
- Matthews’ disorderly conduct charge from the offseason surfaces. Kyle Dubas says he learned about it on Twitter.
- Sandin, at 19, earns a job with the Leafs out of camp. Timashov also unexpectedly claws his way onto the team.
- Babcock scratches Spezza in the season opener.
- Tavares becomes captain, ending months of speculation.
- Leafs play their best game of the early season against the Blues but still lose. Yield seven goals three nights later in a thumping against Tampa.
- Sandin returns to the Toronto Marlies after averaging 12 minutes over six games with the Leafs.
- Tavares breaks his right index finger in Washington. Misses the next seven games.
- Leafs go 6-5-3 in October.
- Mikheyev surprises with 10 points in his first 13 NHL games.
- Alex Ovechkin creates a media firestorm when he says the Leafs need to play like a team, not individuals, to one day win a Stanley Cup. Babcock agrees with him.
- Barrie struggles in his transition to Toronto.
- Justin Holl solidifies a spot on defence, playing more games in October (12) than he did all of last season.
- Travis Dermott makes his season debut following offseason shoulder surgery.
- Marner suffers a high ankle sprain against the Flyers. Expects to miss a minimum of four weeks.
- Hutchinson loses his first five starts — all on the second night of back-to-backs. He’s waived a day after giving up five goals in a loss to Chicago.
- Leafs recall Kasimir Kaskisuo to back up Andersen.
- Hyman makes his season debut following offseason ACL surgery.
They just haven’t looked like it yet, and that merits some level of concern. For Babcock. For Dubas. For everyone in that dressing room. Right now, this team, with all that firepower, all that speed and skill, is sitting 20th in points percentage (.550) and clinging to the final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference.
It’s not been good enough. Not yet, anyway.
“I think, human nature, you want everything to click and us to get rolling and playing well, and it doesn’t obviously always happen that way,” Tavares said.
Added Nylander: “I think we know where we can be. I feel like we’re getting better. The group is growing. So, I think we just gotta keep the pedal down, keep focused.”
All in all they look lousy so far, and Babcock's job is certainly on the line. I wouldn't want to be in Santa Claus' shoes if Mike Babcock sat on his lap and told Kris Kringle what he'd like for Christmas
After all, Micheal Hutchinson got a rock in his stocking.
No comments:
Post a Comment