TORONTO — When the hockey world stopped, the Toronto Maple Leafs decided to “win the wait.”
That was the mantra the team adopted during those uncertain weeks where it was unclear if the NHL would be able to restart amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The phrase helped keep the focus on home workouts in April and May and brought the Leafs back to Toronto en masse for the voluntary small-group sessions that started in early June, something the organization believes could give it an edge this summer.
While some rivals didn’t bother reopening team facilities for Phase 2 due to lack of demand, Toronto had more than 20 players on the ice for all five weeks. And it had everyone back before the transition to Phase 3 last Monday.
That’s bought Sheldon Keefe more technical time than he was expecting to work on systematic tweaks and refining details during the first week of training camp. The head coach remarked more than once that his group was ahead of where he thought it would be from a conditioning standpoint because of the buy-in from his players throughout the pause.
“We’re going pretty good right now,” defenceman Tyson Barrie said Sunday. “I’m not sure what the rest of the league’s looking like, but we’re full speed ahead.”
This hasn’t felt anything like a typical September training camp.
There are fewer bodies to keep tabs on — 30 skaters and four goalies, to be exact — and fewer light moments. The first six days looked like work. There was noticeable intensity during drills and some contact between teammates. Saturday’s scrimmage included sticks slammed in frustration and swear words screamed from the bench of the team that lost 6-2.
The Leafs are less than two weeks from opening a best-of-five Stanley Cup qualifier against Columbus, and Keefe is asking them to push it to another gear as they pass the midpoint of camp.
With the wait winding down, here are some thoughts and observations about what we’ve seen so far at camp:
The Eight Figure Trio
Keefe is not known as a coach who will wait patiently for a game or playoff series to turn back in his team’s favour. He prefers instead to keep everyone on their toes by being open to blowing up the game plan at a moment’s notice.
This stands in stark contrast to his predecessor, Mike Babcock, who took a rigid view of what the Leafs should look like and be, preaching “steady on the rudder” while largely sticking to a predictable way of doing things.
The contrast in styles will be most apparent during the emotional swings of the playoffs. There you will find moments where the coach will be tempted to go all in.
So it was no small thing when Keefe brought together his top three scorers on a line for Sunday’s scrimmage. Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and John Tavares saw just 30 minutes together at 5-on-5 during the regular season and produced predictably damaging results: 61 per cent of shot attempts, 81 per cent of shots on goal, 73 per cent of expected goals and a 3-0 edge in goals.
Matthews, Tavares and Marner are also Toronto’s highest-paid players — carrying a higher combined cap hit than the Blue Jackets’ eight-best paid forwards. They need to be difference makers in a best-of-five series and will probably get some opportunity to do it together.
“I suspect it’s something I would want to go back to at different times,” Keefe said.
Consider it his nuclear option.
Something he can turn to when the Leafs are chasing a tying goal late in a game.
What remains to be seen is if he’ll use it more often than that. With opponents like Boston and Tampa Bay already stacking their top lines, and with William Nylander in his back pocket as a fill-in at second-line centre, the possibility can’t be ruled out entirely.
The Matthews Thing
Through three scrimmages at camp, Auston Matthews is about where you’d expect him to be — leading all players with three goals and seven points.
But he’s still working his way back to peak form.
Matthews was thrown a curve during the pause with a positive COVID-19 test last month, which cost him 10-to-12 planned on-ice sessions while observing quarantine at home in Arizona. That makes a difference for someone with his acute sense of physical awareness.
While his legs seem to be there after skating with teammates in Toronto for the past two and a half weeks, he’s still working on the hands.
We’ve seen Matthews fumble pucks a bit during drills performed in tight spaces. When he’s at his best, they usually look like they’re attached to his stick blade with velcro. It doesn’t seem to be anything worthy of great concern, but it’s an area he’s focused on as we get deeper into camp.
“The way I felt the last couple days is a lot better,” Matthews said. “The timing and just kind of handling the puck and just kind of feeling the way you do halfway through the season when you’ve been playing games and you’re kind of used to it and just the pace of play and everything is starting to come back to me.
“As far as being happy? I’d always like to be better.”
But, William…
Watching William Nylander skate over six days here has taken me back to the second floor conference room at the Sheraton Stockholm last summer. That’s where we sat down for a memorable interview and Nylander said, “I’m ready to dominate this year.”
He followed that up with his most dominant NHL season — on pace for 37 goals and 71 points when the pause kicked in — and he certainly doesn’t appear in danger of taking a step back for the restart.
Nylander has been all over the puck in scrimmages and competitive drills. As much as these things can be evaluated in a training camp format, he’s looked like the most dialled-in player on the ice most days. His edge work certainly doesn’t seem to have suffered from waiting out the pause in Florida playing marathon games of tennis against his brother, Alex.
So ready yourself for all of the redemption arc takes once the summer tournament starts. Even though Nylander felt the need to atone for a disappointing 2018-19 season that saw him miss two months of action due to a contract dispute, he’s hardly been a playoff disappointment overall.
Among the Leafs to appear in the past two series with Boston and the 2017 first-round matchup with Washington, Nylander leads the team in even-strength shot attempts (54.5 per cent), expected goals (56 per cent) and points per 60 (1.94).
Buttoning up
Under these most unusual of circumstances, the question bears asking: Can the Leafs fundamentally change who they are coming out of a four-month layoff and this training camp?
Keefe seems to think so.
“Well I don’t think it’s any secret that we’ve got to be a lot better defensively,” he said. “There’s no area of our game defensively that we were satisfied with and, we’re not kidding ourselves here, we know that there’s a lot of areas that we need to look at. And frankly it’s every area.
“From all three zones, everything that we’re doing there we’re either tweaking it and making changes structurally to how we were playing or we’re having more focused intensity and commitment to the habits and detail within it.”
He went on to call that the team’s “greatest area of opportunity.” The Leafs were third in goals per game (3.39) this season and ranked 23rd among the returning 24 teams in goals against (3.17).
It’s not yet clear how different this will look.
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There has been particular focus in drills on defensive zone coverage and breakouts, with emphasis placed on remaining tightly packed together. The coaching staff has also shared stats with the players that help illustrate where they’ve fallen short. There’s some belief the issues have stemmed from mindset rather than personnel and tactics.
“(We’ve) got to be a little more focused on shutting the other teams down and getting into that top tier of teams at limiting chances,” Barrie said.
The House Divided
The coaching staff clearly made use of the time off. No detail has been spared.
The best-of-five scrimmage series between Team Matthews and Team Andersen — Matthews leads 2-1, with Game 4 set for Wednesday afternoon — has been a source of some fun with a hype-up video created beforehand while also reintroducing the players to their game day routines.
They brought in referees before the NHL intervened. There is music after whistles and a horn for each goal. The PR staff is circulating game notes. They even incorporated TV timeouts into Sunday’s three-period scrimmage to allow for more rest.
Seriously.
The Reserves
An interesting moment happened during practice Friday, when the reserve players were separated from the main group for the first time.
Keefe briefly addressed everyone at centre ice before the drills commenced, saying it wasn’t time to feel sorry for yourself or get distracted by the fact so few players were now on the ice for the session.
He later told reporters: “We don’t know what we’re up against here, what we’re going to face in terms of injuries or whatever circumstances might be, so we really have to be prepared for anything and those guys have got to stay hungry.”
At this point the reserves are Nick Robertson, Nic Petan, Adam Brooks, Denis Malgin, Kenny Agostino, Tyler Gaudet, Egor Korshkov, Calle Rosen, Teemu Kivihalme, Mac Hollowell, Kasimir Kaskisuo and Joseph Woll.
If the Leafs go on to have an extended playoff run, some of them will be needed to play games.
