It’s a good half-hour after the Leafs have left the ice following practice and James van Riemsdyk is back on the ice, alone.
Has slipped again into the equipment he’d just removed. Is repeating that signature little net-side move of his, shifting the skates, lifting the puck over an imaginary goalie.
Perhaps coach Mike Babcock has even noticed the extra bit of solo effort. In which case, message sent and received.
Of course, what everybody had noticed is that rookie hotshot Mitch Marner hasn’t been on the ice at all on this Friday morning, nor seen later, kept well away from enquiring reporters.
In Wednesday’s flat 5-2 loss in Columbus, Marner tried valiantly to stay in the game following an ungainly tumble into the boards and appearing to injure his right shoulder. Twice the 19-year-old Toronto points leader returned to the ice from the dressing room and twice he disappeared again, the second time for good. Alarm bells clanged.
His departure scarcely lifted van Riemsdyk off the bench, where Babcock had planted the winger — and linemate Tyler Bozak — for large chunks of the third frame. Coach’s prerogative, denying a player ice time. An unhappy coach’s prerogative, though perhaps not so often employed as a head-smack against a veteran. But Babcock had clearly been displeased with two pieces of his first line.
“We weren’t playing good,” retorted Babcock Friday, when asked about the seemingly punitive treatment of JVR. “He’s a guy who’s a veteran leader. We need him to be good. William (Nylander) and him ended up on different lines. We were down 3-0. Whatever we were doing wasn’t going very good. So I think you’re entitled to change.’’
Coach is entitled. Ice time is a significant coach’s tool.
“The other thing is, you earn your ice time. It’s real simple. So when you play good you get more, and when you don’t play as good you play less.”
For van Riemsdyk, less totalled just 12 minutes and 51 seconds of ice time.
Stepping back to the wider picture, the big winger has mustered just one (1) point in the past six games.
“I don’t think he hasn’t been getting opportunities,” Babcock observed. “He’s got to get back to work, just like everybody else. We’ve got to grind to compete and be at the net and get some second chances.’’
Not so tacitly, Babcock’s implied van Riemsdyk hasn’t been demonstrating the work and effort quotient expected of him. Guaranteed to draw the coach’s discontent.
It’s an awkward subject for van Riemsdyk to address. “I’m not too worried about that sort of stuff,” he claimed. “As a player you focus on the things you can control and that’s having a good work ethic, a good attitude, and being a good teammate.”
But the message was implicit, no? “There’s so many ways you can look at things . . . ”
Well, one way to look at things is that the Leafs are 2-4 in the half-dozen games coinciding with van Riemsdyk’s offensive near-shutout, now just clinging to the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference; just one point ahead of the Islanders, two points up on the Flyers, one point behind Boston and three back of Ottawa, visitors to the Air Canada Centre for a crucial matchup Saturday. They’re all crucial, granted, in the standings crunch, and Toronto hasn’t managed to string together even a two-game winning streak in the last 10, albeit collecting points in five of them.
“You don’t need any motivation this time of the year to play and to want to play,” van Riemsdyk asserts. “My approach remains the same. Show up every day at practice, try to get better, try to help the team win.’’
Every team, every player, goes through ebbs and flows over the course of a long season. This has been a JVR ebb. “You want to be productive, especially at a time when we’re not picking up as many points as a team collectively in the standings. You want to find ways to help more, contribute more. I know I’m a guy that’s relied upon by this team for offence in particular and to play a certain way.’’
These are days of lively hockey conjecturing, with Toronto in the post-season frame. “We haven’t had a taste of the playoffs in a couple of years,” reminds van Riemsdyk, who’s contributed 19 goals and 25 assists in 56 games, fourth on the points depth chart behind a couple of rookies — Marner and Auston Matthews — and Nazem Kadri. “To be right in the thick of things is a step in the right direction. These are the games you want to play, games that really matter, and you know you’re getting the other team’s best game and if you come out on top, that are the most rewarding.”
Missing even a shift hurts. At the coach’s discretion it’s also a public admonishment. If van Riemsdyk won’t acknowledge that, others will.
“No player likes to sit on the bench and watch the game, especially a guy of JVR’s stature,” says Kadri. “He’s a guy that can change the game in the instant of a play or a pass. Obviously that’s something that he’s not happy about. But he’s a great player. He’s going to get over that and he’s going to bounce back in the next game.”
Whether that next game will include Marner — who’s not missed a game all season — is a decision pending.
“Marner is day-to-day,” Babcock announced, cutting to the quick. “And the next day we’ll talk about it again, how’s that? If we ever get an off-day, we won’t talk about it that day.
“He’s ready to go and he’s dying to get in,” Babcock added. “If I’m in charge, he’s in. If the doctors are in charge, they’ll decide tomorrow.”
At practice, Babcock inserted Connor Brown on the line with van Riemsdyk and Bozak, promoted Josh Leivo — “our best forward last game by far” — onto the Kadri line, Nylander taking Brown’s spot with Matthews and Zach Hyman. Back in training camp, Babcock had actually contemplated a troika of Brown with van Riemsdyk and Bozak. The three had a couple of exhibition games together two years ago.
“Coming into the year, I thought that was going to be a line, to be honest with you,” said Babcock. “I didn’t know Mitch was ready like he is. So that was the plan and it went somewhere else. So (Brown) has an opportunity with those guys now.”
Babcock also had Nikita Soshnikov on the fourth unit. The 23-year-old rookie is well recovered from his own upper body injury. “Sosh was ready to go and it’s time to get him in, anyway.”
But all the line permutations add up to the dreaded Plan B: No Marner for any length of time.
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