Before this renaissance season in Leafland began, James van Riemsdyk was asked to explain the unique challenges that come with a life in blue and white.
Van Riemsdyk, currently on pace for a career season at age 27, is expected to play his 300th regular-season game for the Maple Leafs on Saturday in Boston. This year he was voted No. 100 in the franchise-commissioned centennial ranking of its 100 greatest players. And given all that, he understands better than most the push and pull of the forces that can unsettle players in the centre of the hockey universe.
“There’s times when things seem like they’re higher than high,” van Riemsdyk was saying back in September. “And there’s times when they seem like they’re lower than low.”
The current state of the situation is, for a rare moment in an otherwise swell season, trending decidedly low. The Leafs have lost three straight games in regulation for the first time all year. They’ve lost five of their past seven starts.
“The bottom line is we had a good thing going and we were playing good,” head coach Mike Babcock said after Thursday’s 5-1 loss in St. Louis, “and we let it slip away.”
They haven’t exactly slipped to bottomless depths, mind you. And the prevailing sentiment should hardly be doom and gloom.
“There’s no reason to start getting concerned,” insisted Morgan Rielly, the veteran defenceman.
“We’re not starting to panic or anything,” added goaltender Frederik Andersen.
Panic? In a lot of ways, the timing of Toronto’s current swoon is reason for a pat on the back. There was a time — oh, less than a year ago — when the phrase “three-game regulation losing streak” barely raised pulses in a city grown nearly immune to the years of losing. The Leafs haven’t gone this deep into a season while avoiding a three-game pointless streak since 2003-04.
Back then, of course, the Toronto roster was dotted with hall-of-famers, among them Mats Sundin, Joe Nieuwendyk, Ed Belfour and coach Pat Quinn. That season, as it turns out, marked the last time the franchise made the playoffs after playing an 82-game schedule. To give you an idea of how long ago that was — well, in those days some players still used sticks made of wood.
Then, as now, one of the chief topics was the durability of the starting goaltender. Around this time in 2004, Belfour was battling chronic back pain that kept him out of a large swath of games. Present-day starter Frederik Andersen was injured in a pre-season Olympic qualifier that kept him out of training camp, but has been largely healthy ever since. But there remains concern about his season-long viability given that he’s on pace for to play a heavier schedule than he has ever experienced. The recent returns, whether the product of the grind or simply a random blip, haven’t been encouraging. The team’s 5-on-5 save percentage during its current three-game slide is a dismal .855. And Andersen has allowed eight goals in 71 minutes of playing time since the all-star break.
In 2004, as now, the February conversation surrounded the possibility of shoring up a blue line that wasn’t considered playoff-worthy. (It was Aki Berg, lest we forget, who led all Toronto defencemen in games played). Back then, the Leafs eventually made a deal for another hall-of-famer, Brian Leetch — a swap that, given Toronto’s second-round exit from the playoffs and Leetch’s 15-game career as a Leaf, amounts to a footnote in franchise lore.
The injury to Rielly, who didn’t look like his usual explosive self in St. Louis on Thursday in the wake of a six-game absence with an ankle injury, has heightened speculation the Leafs might consider a move to improve the back end. It’s an obvious weak spot even with Rielly at the height of his powers.
But the quality of the defensive corps is hardly the only concern. Auston Matthews, the 19-year-old all-star, has been, along with Andersen and Mitch Marner, an MVP candidate in Toronto’s turnaround from 30th place to playoff hopeful. But Matthews has managed to plod through his most recent seven games compiling exactly one goal, his lone point.
Even a mere few months into his NHL career we’ve come to discover that doubting No. 34, though, is perilous business. He’s already followed up a well-documented 13-game goal-less drought with a run of four goals in three games that ignited an impressive burst of production. Heading into Friday’s games, Matthews still ranked among the league’s top 10 in goals per game with 23 in 49 outings.
Still, it’s an NHL truism that intensity ramps up as the season goes along. It’s possible the young Leafs came out of the gate sprinting and find themselves suddenly tiring while more veteran teams, who’ve paced themselves, are only beginning to push the pace. It’s possible that recent Toronto-directed hype — say, Montreal Canadiens coach Michel Therrien pronouncing the Leafs the NHL’s “team of the future” — has killed the early-season element of surprise that may have been an advantage. What’s beyond doubt is that this particular Leafs team is navigating an uncharted low.
“A little bit of adversity here for us,” is how van Riemsdyk put it while addressing the media the other night.
Which direction they go next will tell us plenty about where they’re ultimately headed. For the first time in years the educated assumption isn’t oblivion.
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