TORONTO – “He’s 20 years old, isn’t he?” Mike Babcock was saying of Mitch Marner, whose sophomore season has morphed from sluggish to sensational.
That he is. A 20-year-old who has propelled the Toronto Maple Leafs through an ascendant second half, including Wednesday’s 4-3 victory over the Florida Panthers which left them on the verge of officially clinching a playoff spot.
Marner has produced at the level of a top-10 scorer ever since Babcock overhauled his lineup for a Jan. 24 visit to Chicago. That’s when he found a home on the right side of Patrick Marleau and Nazem Kadri – a move that paid immediate dividends then and continues to yield impressive results now, with Marner sitting at 15 goals and 35 points in the 28 games since.
“The way he can move out there and hangs on the puck and sees the ice is something special,” said Marleau. “I think the work he’s doing to get the pucks back on the forecheck and even on the backcheck is leading to those points that he’s getting offensively.”
Marner leads the team with 67 points and could become the first Leafs player in history to hit 70 during an age 20-and-under season. Talk about growth. Only nine men have accomplished that feat league-wide since 2005-06 and each is a bonafide star: Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Patrice Bergeron, Anze Kopitar, Patrick Kane, Steven Stamkos, David Pastrnak, Connor McDavid and Mathew Barzal.
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Having seen Marner stumble through the first couple months of the season, it’s even more impressive he’s scaling these heights today. Remember that he had just two goals to show for the first 29 games. Amid heightened expectations, his trademark panache was nowhere to be found.
It didn’t help that last year’s successful pairing with Tyler Bozak and James van Riemsdyk failed to produce early results. Marner was eventually dropped to the fourth line for a couple games.
“Obviously it was hard,” he says now. “Jumping lines constantly, playing with different people, it’s hard to kind of get a rhythm going. It also hurts your confidence a little bit as well.”
This is a kid whose game typically screams confidence. Take Wednesday, when he absolutely ripped a shot over Panthers goalie Roberto Luongo after tracking his own rebound off the end boards. Minutes later, Marleau was gift-wrapped his 25th goal of the season when Marner swooped across the top of the zone and put a tap-in on his tape.
He was everywhere. Breaking up rushes on the backcheck, calling for passes in traffic, playing with the assuredness of someone who racked up a gaudy 242 points during his last two seasons of junior hockey.
“I thought Marner was a star tonight,” said Babcock.
“I just feel like when he’s skating he’s always involved in the play,” added teammate Auston Matthews. “Obviously he’s a special player, he sees the ice well and makes guys around him better. So when he has the puck on his stick and creates space, I think he really compliments the two guys he’s playing with really well.”
Looking back, Marner’s path out of the early-season fog was charted through incremental gains, game by game. He had to make peace with the slow start and a diminished role in the lineup.
“I started to realize that it didn’t matter who I’m playing with. That everyone on this team’s got a lot of skill and that I’ve just got to step my game up,” said Marner. “I think I kind of just relaxed, talked to family – they calmed me down. … [My game is] just going out there and having fun, kind of enjoying the moment.
“I think that’s what I got back to. I kind of got myself motivated again and going again.”
The Leafs have been going ever since – racking up the NHL’s second-highest point total since Jan. 24 despite missing Matthews for 10 games of that stretch with a separated shoulder.
They now have three 30-goal scorers spread across the top three lines after Matthews bagged No. 30 on Luongo. For good measure, van Riemsdyk potted his team-leading 35th. The goal and an assist from Marner pushed his points streak to a career-best 10 games.
“I think everybody’s gotten better from last year,” said Matthews. “I’d hope so.”
With Game 1 of the playoffs just two weeks away, Toronto will soon get to put that theory to the test. They are unquestionably a more dynamic group when Marner is performing at this level – giving them another tidal wave to throw over the boards and overwhelm opponents.
“He worked, he worked,” Babcock said of what brought success against Florida. “That’s why he had the puck all the time. He was solid defensively. That’s what the young guys got to figure out – if they play good defensively they’re going to get more chances than you can ever imagine versus trying to be cute, and you don’t get near as many chances and you give up too much.
“That’s just part of growing up in the game and understanding how the game works.”
It’s the sort of thing that clicks over time.
Marner’s time may be now.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are going to finish somewhere between 6th and 8th in the overall NHL standings.
This is an incredible run, one that has seen the team set a number of (dubious) records, and which has ignited the fan base into a mob of crazy people who think Auston Matthews is some sort of God. Which, he might actually be. The Toronto Maple Leafs, after one of the shortest rebuilds in NHL history, are now a legit contender for the NHL championship.
So why in the _______ are they going to face one of the only teams in the NHL that is better than they are?
In what is unfair, ridiculous, dumb, nearly inconceivable, preposterous, stupid, enraging, infuriating, abominable, unconscionable, terrible, idiotic and, one could say, also frustrating as hell, the Leafs are set to open the playoffs against either the Boston Bruins or the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Tampa is currently second in the NHL, and could easily win the President’s Trophy. Boston sits one point behind the Lightning with a game in hand, and could also win the President’s Trophy.
So the Leafs reward for being one of the best teams in the NHL is that they have to play one of the best teams in the NHL. Sounds fair.
The NHL Standings are a Joke
The old joke goes something like this: people love hockey so much they put up with the NHL. That is because the NHL is notorious for terrible decisions. Its as if the league looked to the 1980s Maple Leafs as a model for how to do business.
After one season (and earlier, if you actually took two minutes to think about it, which the league clearly didn’t) it was obvious that the new playoff formatting didn’t work. Forcing teams to fight within their division may be good for business, but it takes away the main reward for having a good season: a weaker playoff opponent. This can’t happen in the NHL if two of the league’s best teams ever end up in the same division, which pretty much happens every year.
If you are one of the best teams, you’re supposed to play the weakest teams. That’s how playoffs work………in every other league.
The Washington Capitals, forced to play the Penguins annually in the second round, have been the biggest loser in this format, but every year there is something dumb going on. This year, it’s the Leafs who get screwed. But not just the Leafs – it’s actually even worse for Tampa or Boston.
There is no way that your reward for winning the President’s Trophy should be a first round matchup against a team that might have finished ahead of you had its best player been healthy for more than 75% of the year.
Not only is this unfair to the three Atlantic teams (arguably, if healthy, the NHL’s three best teams) but it also gives an advantage to weaker teams. For instance, last year the Senators (who everyone knew were terrible, just lucky) almost got a by to the Finals, because Washington and Pittsburgh had to play in the “real” Stanley Cup Final a round earlier.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter because the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to beat anyone they end up facing, but it should be said that it’s really dumb that two of the NHL’s best teams are going to play in the first round.
The Montreal Canadiens have serious issues on their hands right now: they’re not winning games, and their development pipeline in the AHL isn’t exacting bursting with talent outside of Nikita Scherbak and Noah Juulsen. While they did well in the last NHL draft to address two major holes in their prospect pool, the team still lacks NHL-ready (or even close to NHL-level) talent right now. Part of that comes from trading away players in deals, missing draft picks from deadline swaps, and various overall mismanagement of the assets they did have.
The Canadiens’ farm system has been an abject disaster since the time of Marc Bergevin’s arrival in the organization. The Hamilton Bulldogs and St. John’s IceCaps made the playoffs a combined one time under his tenure, and that was a four-game best-of-five series which they lost. In the team’s inaugural season, the Laval Rocket are also on track to have the worst finish ever under head coach Sylvain Lefebvre.
As you can see from the chart above, the Habs’ AHL affiliate hasn’t seen a single winning season, or even many prolonged periods around a .500 record.
Perhaps more concerning is that during these extended downturns, the AHL clubs aren’t outwardly producing much in terms of potential NHL stars, with only a handful of players sticking in the NHL full-time and with decent results. Of those players, three were traded away (Sven Andrighetto, Nathan Beaulieu, Greg Pateryn), one played fewer than 40 AHL games total (Brendan Gallagher), and one has only just found a place in the regular lineup (Charles Hudon). There have been players with extremely high expectations failing to come out of the sustem ready to make an NHL impact, like Jacob de la Rose and Michael McCarron, who both looked like decent future NHL players in their first years within the organization.
After stockpiling draft picks after a rebuild under Brendan Shanahan, Lou Lamoriello, and Kyle Dubas, the Toronto Maple Leafs have an absurd amount of prospect depth to work with. They’ve been extremely patient with their high-end stars, letting players like William Nylander, Andreas Johnsson, and Kasperi Kapanen play major minutes for the Marlies, while mixing in short NHL stints until they forced the hand of Mike Babcock and stayed in the lineup.
Players like Nikita Soshnikov and Josh Leivo have proven their worth at the AHL level, yet due to a backlog of talent in the NHL can’t even get regular minutes. By comparison, Montreal regularly scratches one of its better defensive options, and for whatever reason has given more ice time to fourth-liners than actual goal-scorers.
It seems that anyone called up from the Marlies in the recent seasons fits in almost immediately at the NHL level due to the coaching styles and the development they received. Justin Holl and Travis Dermott went from the the AHL this year, to seamlessly fitting in the NHL, with Dermott now being a staple on the blue line.
Montreal has seen at most two successful NHL call-ups, one of whom has a limited sample size in Nikita Scherbak, the other being Nicolas Deslauriers who has found a home on the fourth line, but he’s significantly older than a typical prospect.
Another long-standing issue is with players who might not be NHL stars, but can be good contributors at the AHL level. Toronto has made use of guys like Colin Greening and Ben Smith, but they don’t take away ice from the young players being groomed for NHL roles. In recent years, top prospects in the Habs’ AHL system have been benched for such players as John Scott on defence, Joe Finley, Bobby Shea, Nick Tarnasky, and other options with no projection for an NHL roster spot. Having veterans isn’t an issue, but it can become one when players who need the ice time to develop are pushed to the side.
Despite multiple seasons spent at the bottom of the AHL standings, the Canadiens have stuck by Lefebvre in the AHL. They’ve fired or let assistant coaches walk, but stuck with a man who has been given more leash than he deserves at this point.
Flanking him on the bench is Nick Carrière, a coach whose best season prior to joining the AHL ranks was going 8-5-3 at the NCAA Division III level. If Lefebvre is fired, is hiring his assistant who has even less experience really the route they’re going to go? Or if he’s being groomed for an NHL job, what part of his resume qualifies him for it right now?
Compare this to the current iteration of the the Toronto Maple Leafs. Since cleaning house and burning the franchise to the ground, their system has paid major dividends for the NHL club. They lost AHL head coach Dallas Eakins to an NHL deal, replacing him with Steve Spott who made a deep playoff run, and was then hired to work in the NHL for Toronto before moving on to San Jose. They then promoted Gord Dineen from assistant to head coach, with the team losing in the first round of the playoffs in his first year behind the bench. Dineen took a step back when Sheldon Keefe was hired, acting as an associate coach instead. With Keefe behind the bench, the Marlies have become one of the AHL’s elite teams, combining youth, good systems and a dash of proper veteran presence to create a terrifying team to play against.
Replacing Lefebvre shouldn’t be a hard task. There’s a perfect candidate for the Canadiens right in their own backyard. That man is Dominique Ducharme, who is one of the most respected coaches in junior hockey, and on the biggest junior stage of all he collected a pair of gold medals with Team Canada. He stated he was done coaching the national team after his latest medal, and with him not currently coaching a team he’s readily available for a promotion from the QMJHL. He has a proven track record working with top prospects, whether they were players for the Halifax Mooseheads or Canada’s under-20 team.
He is not the only option. Another member of Team Canada’s World Juniors staff, Joel Bouchard, is also the president, general manager, and head coach of the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada. In recent seasons, the Armada have become one of the top teams in the QMJHL, and, much like Ducharme, he is a coach who could himself gain development for a future role behind the Canadiens’ bench.
Roster mismanagement has plagued the Canadiens and their minor-league clubs, especially in this most recent season. Laval has lost almost all of its scoring talent due to trades, injuries, or call-ups. Byron Froese was recalled and has been a mix of a healthy scratch and fourth-line centre for far longer than the 10-game/30-day rule that allows waiver-eligible players to play with the NHL club for a short period of time before being returned to the AHL with no chance of a claim from another team. The same applies for Daniel Carr and Nicolas Deslauriers.
These were all crucial players for the Rocket. Without them, and due to the lack of star prospects, the team has predictably faltered.
Most embarrassing of all is that the Canadiens then tried to add one of their ECHL affiliate’s stars, David Vallorani, to the Laval roster, but was apparently unaware of the contract rules of the AHL. It’s inexcusable for a team that has such a vast amount of resources to handle such things.
Recently, signing players to tryouts, as they have with Nikita Korostelev and Anthony Beauregard, is something Toronto has used to great effect in the past, in addition to signing NCAA seniors and CHL over-agers. Montreal’s interest in players like Jimmy Schuldt and Hayden Verbeek shows promise that there’s a plan to change the approach to free-agent additions.
These don’t always have be on NHL deals either. Signing a player to an AHL deal and then opgrading that to an NHL deal if he earns it, like Markus Eisenschmid did, is a possible solution as well.
This is an important off-season for the Canadiens, who can either choose to clean house and start fresh, or revel in the mediocrity of an AHL team that struggles to hit a winning record. There needs to be accountability for why there are so few NHL-ready prospects, why project prospects haven’t progressed, and why the AHL team cannot win more often than it loses.
There are options out there to take over coaching and development at the AHL level. The Canadiens’ general manager should act immediately in the off-season to set the farm team on the correct path, and following the Toronto Maple Leafs’ lead isn’t a bad plan of action.
Two weeks ago we were discussing the NHL playoffs at Sunday dinner and I said that the Maple Leafs were essentially locked into 3rd in the Atlantic Division.
“Hang on,” my brother in law said, “The Panthers could catch them.”
“No, they won’t.”
“They could.”
“No.”
So, without further adieu, I would like to point out to you, Stephen, that the Panthers are 12 points back of the Maple Leafs with two weeks left in the season.
Suck it.
Florida Panthers at Toronto Maple Leafs
7:30PM - Air Canada Centre
Watch: Sportsnet, TVA Sports, Sportsnet Now, NHL Live
Listen: TSN1050, Sportsnet 590
SBN: Litter Box Cats
So, here we are. Game 77 of an 82 game season, the end of March with two more weeks of hockey to go. The Leafs are set in their position, and they could perform an act of mercy tonight and beat the Panthers into remembering they aren’t a playoff team.
So, what should we expect tonight? Well, previously in the season the Leafs beat the Panthers 1-0, and lost to the Panthers 3-2 in a shootout twice. If we’re following the other games It will be a close, low scoring game. A real treat.
Here are your projected lines.
Toronto Maple Leafs
Zach Hyman - Auston Matthews - William Nylander
Patrick Marleau - Nazem Kadri - Mitchell Marner
James van Riemsdyk - Tyler Bozak - Connor Brown
Andreas Johnsson - Tomas Plekanec - Kasperi Kapanen
Morgan Rielly - Ron Hainsey
Jake Gardiner - Nikita Zaitsev
Travis Dermott - Roman Polak
Frederik Andersen
Curtis McElhinney
Florida Panthers
Evgeni Dadonov - Aleksander Barkov - Nick Bjugstad
Jonathan Huberdeau - Vincent Trochek - Jamie McGinn
Maxim Mamin - Denis Malgin - Colton Sceviour
Michael Haley - Derek MacKenzie - Frank Vatrano
Keith Yandle - Aaron Ekblad
Michael Matheson - Mark Pysyk
MacKenzie Weegar - Alex Petrovic
Roberto Luongo
James Reimer
Here’s my simple, yet effective table:
Numbers Preview Maple Leafs Team Panthers Maple Leafs Team Panthers 250GF - 214GA - +36 Goal Differential 223GF - 221GA - +2 23.7% - 3rd overall Power Play 19% - 21st overall 82.5% - 8th overall Penalty Kill 80.9% - 13th overall James van Riemsdyk - 34 Most Goals Vincent Trocheck - 30 Mitch Marner - 45 Most Assists Aleksander Barkov - 49 Mitch Marner - 65 Most Points Aleksander Barkov - 75 Matt Martin - 50 Most PM Michael Haley - 205 Jake Gardiner - 22:30/G TOI Leader Keith Yandle - 24:32/G Frederik Andersen - .917sv% Starting Goalie Roberto Luongo - .927sv%
Here’s my take on the game:
The season is too damn long.
Go Leafs Go!
