Grange on Leafs: The lessons are yet to come
Posted January 9, 2012 11:50 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It wasn’t exactly a quiz, more of a trick question: With half a season done and another half yet to play, what have the Toronto Maple Leafs learned?
The answers, as the Leafs were getting poised to defend their mid-season playoff position Tuesday night against the Buffalo Sabres, were earnest and well-meaning, if slightly off-side.
“We’re a very young team and sometimes we play young and immature and sometimes we play like we’ve been in the league for 10 years,” said David Steckel. “The once thing we do have is resiliency. We never give up. We play for the entire 60 minutes, whether we’re playing good or bad and that’s what counts the most to the guy sitting beside you. “
Said Matthew Lombardi:
“We’ve learned we’ve got a really good group, it’s a young group, but we have a lot of energy and so many guys that can contribute. It’s an exciting process, the energy guys have coming in here every day. Guys are looking forward to reaching our goal, it’s pretty cool.”
Said Captain Dion Phaneuf:
“We have a fast team and when we’re skating, we’re tough to play against…when we use our speed we’re effective.”
Wrong, wrong and BZZZZ! – wrong again.
Or at least, not entirely right.
There are elements of the truth in everything that is being said around the Leafs room as they reflect on a three-game winning streak that has them in control of their playoff destiny with half a season gone and 41 games to play.
But the correct answer is that youthful Leafs have learned nothing yet.
Instead the real lessons will be learned over the next few months as the youngest team in the NHL and one with limited playoff experience in the lineup – only 11 players who have suited up so far this season have even been to the post-season, let alone boast a Stanley Cup ring – figures out how climb the regular season mountain and reach a playoff peak.
Where veteran teams with Cup aspirations have the experience to focus on the process and not the result, the fuzzy-cheeked Leafs are like a bunch of minor hockey kids checking the standings every morning.
Patience is not yet a virtue, and how can you trust the process when you don’t know what it is first-hand?
“We’re young,” says Steckel, who has 24 career playoff games, seventh most on the club, all of them coming from his years with the Washington Capitals. “Guys get really up about something but at the same token when we have a bad bounce or something doesn’t go our way we have kind of a letdown.”
“In Washington we didn’t focus on the playoffs. We knew we were going to be in the playoffs. We focused on our game … Here it’s more or less like my first couple of years in Washington where guys are looking at standings all the time; but you don’t need to look at the standings. You need to focus on the two points that night; play the season on a week-by-week basis, win that week and you’ll be fine.”
Easier said than done, obviously, and likely easier outside of a market like hockey-mad Toronto.
Head coach Ron Wilson has an idea he’d like to introduce to help his young team to keep things in perspective but – like his penalty killing concepts that have yet to take hold – it’s a non-starter:
“The first thing would be to ban all of you guys from the room to stop asking those questions (about the playoffs), but I can’t do that,” said Wilson, who is trying to guide a Leafs team to the playoffs for the first time in five tries. “So we talk about it and make sure the leaders on our team talk about that too, that we focus on the next period and better yet the next shift.”
The challenge the Leafs have is their leadership group may be in need of leading themselves. The most experienced playoff performer is Joffrey Lupul with 39 games over three post-seasons, but none since 2009 with the Philadelphia Flyers.
He’s veteran on paper but in his own way like the Leafs as a whole – still unproven. His breakout first-half performance has him fifth in the NHL scoring race and on-pace for a career-best 94 points, which would blow away his previous high of 53.
The Leafs too are on pace for 94 points, which would blow away seven seasons of playoff misery.
So far the Leafs, like Lupul, have learned they’re worthy of prime time consideration. Now it’s a matter of landing that fish. The problem is it’s a long way from the lake to boat.
“It’s a young group and the hockey market we’re playing in,” said Lupul. “We lose three games on the road and we come back and it seems like the end of the world. And now we’ve won three straight and we’re planning the parade.
“That’s something we can work on, but we need to experience some ups and downs. Hopefully we don’t experience another three-game losing streak, but we probably will at some point.”
Lupul, barely a year into his Leafs career, has at least learned that much.
