Spector on Leafs, Flames: Fighting for a spot
Posted March 3, 2011 4:25 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
They are burning down the stretch, the Toronto Maple Leafs and Calgary Flames, two Canadian clubs coming at the playoffs from completely different directions.
Yet the odds say only one will prevail.
History tells us that there is a better than even chance that either Toronto will pull off the miracle and grab an eighth seed, or Calgary will hang on in the West. But it’s probably an either/or situation — the odds say both cities will not get their wish.
“We can smell the playoffs, we’re a confident group,” Toronto’s out-of-the-blue goaltender James Reimer said Wednesday night, after his 11th NHL win in a season where his own coach didn’t expect him to earn even one. “I think we’re a different team (from the first half). We’re more determined right now. We want to work hard for each other, for the guy across the room.”
That sentiment defines a Flames team that was no less dead and buried at New Year’s than were the Maple Leafs.
Today, a playoff spot is Calgary’s to lose. Sure, they’re giving up a couple of games in hand right now, but Calgary is ensconced in the Top 8 out West with 16 games to play. They’ve got the goaltending, they’ve found the offence, and if Calgary delivers the requisite number of wins — maybe 10 of 16? — they’ll make the playoffs.
Toronto? They probably need 25 points out of their final 18 games. Throw in an overtime or shootout loss, and the Leafs — a .500 team to this point in the season — need to keep up a .667 pace through the next five weeks to break their five-year playoff drought.
You should know, however, they’ve played at a .733 clip since the all-star break. Whether Toronto can maintain that pace will depend on Reimer’s ability to keep this roll going.
Funny, isn’t it? How a season depends on a guy coach Ron Wilson thought he’d seen for the last time when he was farmed out last fall?
“I wouldn’t have bet a plugged nickel that he’d be one of our goalies this year, to be honest with you,” Wilson said Wednesday. “We wanted him to play in the minors and continue getting better and develop.
“Circumstances have allowed him an opportunity and he’s taken advantage of it. He’s much farther along than we thought. And that’s good for him. But I didn’t have any expectations for Reims other than have him here in the American league.”
Phil Kessel is on an incredible roll for Toronto, with eight goals and 13 points. He has, over the past few weeks, become the on-ice leader that so many have decried he is not in the dressing room.
But isn’t that always the theme when a team like Toronto or Calgary turns on the jets at this time of year? Don’t we always invoke the old cliché, “Your best players need to be your best players?”
In Calgary, Jarome Iginla has 6-11-17 in the past 13 games; Alex Tanguay has 6-12-18 in his last 14 games; and Brendan Morrison, brought on as a helping hand at the season’s beginning, has risen to centre the top line.
Morrison, still pictured in a Canucks jersey on the NHL’s web site, has no goals but 14 helpers in his last 13 games. He has become Calgary’s top plus-minus forward at plus-13 — exactly why Morrison was acquired, while Iginla has assumed his role as the team’s leading scorer.
Morrison limped off the ice in Chicago Wednesday night however, and those close to the team feared the worst for his apparently injured knee. These are the types of things that can derail a nice run, where the centre on your best line suddenly loses three weeks to injury, and his wingers feel the pain.
When it comes to these late-season tears, the Maple Leafs, of course, tend to do this every year around this time, don’t they?
After stumbling through most of the first 55 games, they stage a skein that keeps the flame burning for Leafs Nation. In recent years they’ve hung around until somewhere between Game 75 and 82, then drop a couple of cripplers in a row, and another season ends in game disappointment.
Stat of the Day: Since the lockout, Toronto has been a .510 hockey team overall.
But from the all-star or Olympic break until the end of the season, the Leafs have played .622 hockey.
The good news? At least if they fall short again this season, turning a lottery pick into a 10th or 11th pick, it will be Boston’s problem, not the Leafs.
