“I mean, we’re losing, but I think we’re feeling positive and hopefully trending in the right direction. If this keeps going another month, then maybe we’d be in a different mood.” —William Nylander, November 18
WASHINGTON, D.C. — “You gotta play!”
Craig Berube is hollering top lung at William Nylander as the superstar and his teammates stand around for a breath and a berating between neutral-zone checking drills in a mostly vacant Capital One Arena.
The scoreboard numbers, still frozen and raw the morning after, look flattering.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have returned to the scene of their most passionless crime all season, a 4-0 loss to the Washington Capitals less than 15 hours prior.
Enough time to lose sleep and stare at your reflection and scarf a bagel and not much else.
The arena air is cloudy with tension.
The players appear sullen.
Nylander’s feet drag.
Each blow of the coach’s whistle feels much shriller than it should, with the NHL’s roster freeze about to lock in and a happy holiday break tucked around the corner.
For 19 busy minutes, Berube coaches his butt off — directing and pushing the group between individual chats and whiteboard lessons — while general manager Brad Treliving observes, hand on chin, from the lower bowl alongside advisors Brendan Pridham and Shane Doan.
A month has passed since a shirtless Nylander brushed off the spiritual impact of his team’s uninspired performance and told us to check back in 30 days.
Well, it has been going on for another month — the inconsistency, the disconnect, the outside-the-playoffs status — and the Maple Leafs are evidently in a different mood.
“We need to come to the rink with some more joy. I feel like we’ve been a little down on ourselves,” Troy Stecher tells Sportsnet.ca, squeezing in a sweat and a stretch before chartering to Tennessee.
“It’s crazy, the ebbs and flows. It seems like you’re on the ultimate high and the ultimate low. So, you gotta find a way to kind of stay even keel, continue to stay in the fight every game — which good teams find a way to do — and come to the rink with some joy.”
At least the Maple Leafs aren’t ducking their dramatic downturn in competitiveness, in results, in mood.
Ask Stecher about Berube’s accusation that the Capitals packed more passion Thursday than the franchise that uses that very attribute as a slogan, and he’ll shoot back: “Is he wrong?”
Nope, the coach is spot on.
“Exactly. It was pretty evident last night with how we played. Good teams find a way to win games they don’t deserve to. And games that they don’t win, they still find a way to still be in the fight,” Stecher, a career-long fighter, continues.
“Like, it feels like there’s always a chance or some hope. Since I’ve been here, I felt that last night was the first time where it felt like we kinda rolled over and died.”
As a result, a fed-up fan base is grabbing sticks of chalk and searching for bodies to outline.
Are Berube’s days numbered if his message can’t penetrate?
Should Treliving escape unscathed?
Heck, is MLSE honcho Keith Pelley, who rolled back to North America preaching championships and forcefully endorsed the Treliving-Berube era after the Game 7 massacre, too high up to blame?
Would axing an easy fall guy like assistant Marc Savard, overseer of the NHL’s most disappointing power play, keep the wolves at bay?
And what of the guys with the life-changing direct deposits? You know, the ones who actually lace the boots and punch the clock?
“Well, they’re definitely down, right? They’re not where they want to be, and neither are we as coaches. We’re all in it together,” says Berube, a one-man good-cop-bad-cop act.
“I just said, ‘Guys, we’re in the NHL. Like, let’s have some fun.’ I get it, you know? But we’re still OK. We’ve got to string some wins together and put ourselves in a better spot. But, like, you love this game, right? We all do. That’s why we’re in it, and that’s why we do it. So, you gotta enjoy it, and you gotta have that attitude going in tomorrow. Like, go play the game.”
Morgan Rielly, the longest-serving Maple Leaf, has been quick to profess his belief in the core, in the room, even after nine playoff exits too soon, and this, their most concerning opening 33-game stretch to date.
Is that belief on the brink?
“It’s constantly being tested, you know?” Rielly says. “It’s a challenge, but it’s extremely important to keep the belief and keep that mentality that we’re able to play with anyone and win on any night. And I don’t think you can let one game or one stretch change that entirely. But there are times where everyone has to look in the mirror and give more.”
Oh, we’re there.
Nylander is stuck in an uncharacteristic nine-game goal drought. He’s minus-6 in December.
Auston Matthews is minus-4 over his past four games. His shot totals are two, one, and two over his past three games. The Leafs assured us again Friday that the captain is “100 per cent” healthy, yet our eyes are building a counterargument.
John Tavares, with whom Berube spoke one-on-one both before and after Friday’s practice, is mired in a season-worst four-game point drought and is dash-5 over that span.
The club’s first-quarter MVP has mustered one goal in the past 12 games. It’s been 20 games since Tavares scored on Savard’s power play, which was not practised Friday despite going 0-for-5 Thursday.
The great irony here is that, as damaged as the Leafs’ spirit is, Berube wants his skaters to play free and light. On their toes. Mistakes will be forgiven, but only if they are born from aggression, not tentativeness.
If the Maple Leafs disappoint their coach again Saturday in Nashville — against the bottom-feeding, trade-entertaining, scheduled-win Predators — it better be because they tried too hard.
“Whenever you lose, you feel that. You don’t want to let your teammates down. You don’t want to let your coach down,” Rielly says. “You don’t want to let anyone down.”
Stecher explains that, in the hush of the visiting quarters, the Leafs shared together in the shame of Thursday’s effort.
“Nobody is pointing fingers at anybody,” Stecher says. “You’re all in it together. I don’t think anybody, to a man, can sit in that room last night and say they played a good game.
“Just a hard look in the mirror. Some honest conversations with each other, that we need to be better. But nobody’s yelling at each other.
“I think people forget, like, there’s nobody that cares more than the guys in that room. You know what I mean? Like, at the end of the day, that’s the complete truth. We want to win more than anybody. So, it sucks when you have a performance like that.”
It’ll suck more if the Maple Leafs can’t summon enough joy to rectify things Saturday on Broadway.
“You try to call it a one-off, and you try to turn the page,” Stecher says.
“But if we’re not desperate next game, then there’s bigger problems.”
