Gare Joyce

Gare Joyce writes regularly on junior hockey for Sportsnet.ca. A veteran journalist, Joyce is the author of Future Greats and Heartbreaks: A Year Undercover in the Secret World of NHL Scouts, When the Lights Went Out: How One Brawl Ended Hockey's Cold War and Changed the Game and Sidney Crosby: Taking the Game by Storm. He also writes for ESPN The Magazine, espn.com and several Canadian magazines.

Can John Tavares deliver a Memorial Cup to London?

The million-dollar question hanging over the Ontario Hockey League these days: What impact can John Tavares have on the London Knights’ chances of making it to the Memorial Cup?

Even before they landed him in a trade with Oshawa on the deadline, the Knights were a good team, a legit contender. Of all teams in the OHL’s Western Conference, they were given the best chance of knocking off the CHL’s top-ranked team, the Windsor Spitfires. Maybe even the best chance of any team in the O. With Tavares, those chances only had to improve.

I went up to Belleville on Saturday night to catch JT & Co. versus the Bulls, the points leader in the Eastern Conference, a tilt that might be a preview of an O final. (Those of you ardent backers of Windsor and Brampton, hold your fire on the message board. I’d lean to that being the combination.) I also caught the Knights’ visit to Ottawa on the tube — a lot of it, anyway, because I was in the process of working up a small vat of guacamole for a Super Bowl party. I’m sure that the Spitfires, who visit London Friday night for what should be an epic tilt, were watching too.

Like a lot of you, I figured that the Hunters, general manager Mark and coach Dale, would be trying to squeeze all the juice possible out of Tavares, giving him all kinds of ice time in what’s bound to be his last tour around the O. Maybe it wouldn’t turn-out that way in all games — no sense emptying his tank against teams that London was going to smoke anyway. But it would seem to the be the order of the day when the Knights were in against a tough opponent and as long as they had faint hope of making a race with the Spitfires for top seed in the West. Belleville looked like just such an opponent and the Knights certainly aren’t approaching this No. 1 is out of reach.

My guacamole turned out as expected (four out of five stars, marked down for too much curry powder), but not the Belleville game. It wasn’t the result that surprised. London came in and won a tight game 3-2. And it definitely wasn’t a surprise given the Bulls were playing their third game in a real-time span of 48 hours. They looked sluggish at the start and thoroughly gassed at the end. No, what was a surprise to me if nobody else is the fact that Tavares took a regular shift with linemates Phil McCrae and Jason Wilson but not a whole lot more. On a couple of occasions he wasn’t the first option on the powerplay. Dale Hunter went with Nazem Kadri instead and brought Tavares on in the second minute.

I happened to be sitting beside the Knights’ staffer who was logging shifts and ice time for the team and at game’s end his sheet showed just seconds over 21 minutes of time on the ice. A healthy Knight’s/night’s work to be sure but something short of superstar minutes. And especially in a game that featured seven London powerplays.

The prevailing wisdom is that it’s goofy for NHL teams to hold onto 18- or 19-year-olds who are logging six or eight minutes in the men’s league when they could be sent back to junior to play 30 or 35 minutes a game. At least, that’s the prevailing wisdom for those who watch a lot of NHL games but infrequently lurk in junior arenas. Anyway, I’ve always figured that scenario overstates the case, especially with forwards. Unless your fourth line has been left at home to serve detentions and you enjoy a spate of powerplays it’s hard to get up to those numbers.

Still, 21 minutes isn’t pushing Tavares too hard. I suspect that’s right around what he logged in the medal games at the under-20s.

I’m sure that some of it was situational. London never trailed in the game. If the Knights were down a goal or two, would Dale Hunter have found more shifts for JT? Yup. If the Knights weren’t staring at a game in Ottawa the following afternoon, would he have looked for more from Tavares? You bet.

What was interesting, though, was the composition of those 21 minutes. Hunter sent Tavares out on first penalty-kill a couple of times. He also sent him out for face-offs in the London’s end with the Knights clinging to a one-goal lead in the last couple of minutes.

“Since he came here we’ve been really happy with John’s two-way play,” Dale Hunter said afterward. “We won’t hesitate to have him on the ice [at times like that].”

The last time I saw JT in this rink was in his first game after the WJC and, as it turned out, his last game for the Generals. It was a mercy killing sans the mercy. Tavares played about as well as you could have expected but it was pretty hopeless at that point. In that game he showed flashes of the skill that carried the Canadian team to wins at the under-20s, especially vs the U.S. in the opening round, but there’s only so much that one player can do. Tavares even admitted that in those last few days with Oshawa it was “like a funeral.”

From funeral in Oshawa to a belated New Year’s in London. He didn’t look like a different player Saturday night, just an energized (or re-energized) one. The usual dynamic for Tavares: 1. He’s a threat anytime he’s out there. 2. Defenders flop-sweat as soon as the puck hits his stick. 3. A couple of times a game he’ll do something spectacular.

Most commentators dwell on his finishing, to be expected I suppose after racking up 72 goals as a 16-year-old. But I think his eyes and his sense of occasion are keys to his success.

The eyes came into play on London’s first goal, a powerplay score. Playing out on the right boards and stealthily closing up to the faceoff dot and with London methodically moving the puck over to him for the payoff, Tavares had a couple of chances, target practice really, far side high, short side low. Bulls G Mike Murphy was up to the task on both occasion, though the first one he only barely turned away with a shoulder shrug. The third time he had got the puck on that powerplay though, he recognized a Bulls defender cheating a bit too boldly on him and skated into the slot, dragging his shadow with about him and opening all kinds of room for Phil Varone in his wake. Murphy followed Tavares and the puck too, so that Tavares’s pass behind him left Varone a wide open net and Murphy no chance.

I know, sense of occasion sounds a little goofy, but some goals are daggers and Tavares scores too many of them for it to be coincidence. The bigger the occasion, the better he is. So it was against Belleville. Nick Palmieri had just scored to knot the game about six minutes into the third period and it looked like Belleville might steal a point or two. But just as Palmieri’s name was being read out over the p.a. and before the crowd could cheer, Tavares had worked a magic deke and wired a shot the other way. An absolute killer.

Looking at the Belleville game, I think that the Hunters have it right. If another lesser team had acquired Tavares, maybe a complete overhaul would be the route to go. But the Hunters had to bring in a huge talent to an already strong team without thoroughly disrupting an established order. It would not have been wise nor fair to shorten the bench of a team that’s been in the nation’s top ten all season. The guys aren’t slouches. And you can get too much of a good thing (the curry in the guacamole, I guess) even if you have a talent as rare as a good avocado in Toronto in February.

*

The tilt in Ottawa was a different story. A quick turn-around for London, night game to afternoon with three hours on the bus. JT wasn’t the story this time out. Rather it was Ottawa’s Logan Couture.

Tavares’s and Couture’s paths intersected—sort of—a few years back when the former was petitioning the OHL for early entry and the latter seemed slotted for the No. 1 overall pick in the OHL draft. When Tavares’s paperwork was rubber-stamped by the league, Oshawa ended up taking him instead of Couture, to the understandable distress to the latter player and family.

Those paths intersected again Sunday with Couture going for four points and a plus-3 while Tavares was a minus-3. Two ears and a tail, shoulda come out for the first star like this.

I like Couture as a player and I’m sure that San Jose does, having spent a top-ten draft pick on him. I can’t help think that he’s been a star-crossed kid given his bad breaks and snubs. He has played hurt for the 67’s. He came back from a bout with mono too quickly and his play for both his junior team and an under-18 team suffered. (On the latter count, I was at the under-18s a couple of years ago and no player was more knocked inside the team and by scouts than Couture.) He was regarded by NHL teams as a kid whose work habits and conditioning were suspect. (“Very immature” one scout told me.) And then for Couture not even to get an invitation to the tryouts for this year’s under-20 team right in Ottawa ... well, the slaps don’t get bigger than that.

It might have been that London was somewhat tenderized by the sked—that’s just the way it is with teams that stagger into Ottawa for Sunday sessions. Still that doesn’t take anything away from Couture’s performance. He made the most of his last chance to play against his hometown team ... unless you really want to take a flyer on the OHL final.

*

The ever-expanding notebook:

Item One: I walked one NHL scout through the four big OHL contenders’ netminders for his thumbnail assessment and he gave real hope to teams in the East being able to spring an upset. (For what it’s worth, the scout has no rooting interest in any of the following goaltenders, his employers having already committed to another highly drafted goaltender.)

• Thomas McCollum, who came over from Guelph to Brampton on the deadline, is en fuego. “The best in the league since New Year’s. Just dominant. Didn’t have a great under-20 tournament but he gives you a chance not just in any game but in any series. He’s been that good.”

• Mike Murphy, Belleville’s bellweather, is an open secret among insiders and at the top of all the telling OHL stats. “He gives his team a chance to win every night. He doesn’t get a lot of respect because he’s not a technical goalie and he’s not thought of as a great athlete but if you go back to the start of the season no one has been better in more games than him.” Footnote: I’ve seen him in eight games this year and the game against London was his least impressive—which is to say that he was very good-to-occasionally spectacular vs the Knights and absolutely soul-crushing in other previous contests.

• Trevor Cann, who came over from London from Peterborough earlier this season. “He’s played for the under-18s but I’ve never really got him. I don’t see him as someone who’s going to steal games and be the difference in a playoff series.” Footnote: Did not play Saturday night, did not look good against Ottawa Sunday afternoon.

• Andrew Engelage of Windsor, a pretty massive kid who, natch, leads the league in wins but has passed through the NHL drafts like a meteor descending from the heavens. “He’s decent enough goaltender and teams have won Memorial Cups with goaltenders who weren’t real pro prospects but it seems a lot to expect.” Footnote: Josh Unice, the goalie who played for the US 18s a couple of years back and came over in Windsor’s deadline deal with Kitchener, didn’t help his case to move into the No. 1 slot or even a time-share with Engelage with a flatline performance in a loss to Plymouth Friday night.

Item Two: Belleville’s Bryan Cameron took a brutal penalty against London Saturday. His team was pretty beat up but hanging in against London and had just tied the game 1-all. When the red light went on for Eric Tangradi’s goal in the last minute of the second period, Cameron turned around and sticked Justin Taylor. Selfish, impetuous, stupid … take your pick. There have been nights when I thought that Cameron has as much skill as anybody in the O (save Tavares and a couple of others). But his game is so in-and-out that it must frustrate everyone in the organization. Too often he does stuff like this. He gets tossed … bad for the team in against a tough opponent that night. He gets games for a match penalty … bad for a team that needs every point it can muster in a race with Brampton in the Eastern Conference.

Item Three: Daniel Erlich is listed at 5’6” … yup, and Billy Barty should have been listed at 5’6-and-a-half. I can’t remember anyone shorter playing so much and so well in the O. He makes Dan Tessier look like Zdeno Chara but the ex-67’s centre (who was a lot closer to 5’7” than a listed 5’9”) and Erlich might be comparables in that they can go around guys but also under checkers. He had a couple of goals on his stick vs Belleville but Murphy robbed him. He also tried running P.K. Subban but mostly for comic effect. Ryan Ellis could be brought in as a ringer at the Quebec peewee tournament, sure, but Erlich could sneak onto the ice for with Timbits kids in the intermission at the WFCU.