OTTAWA – James Reimer was once a beacon of hope for the Toronto Maple Leafs, so it was only fitting that the goaltender’s voice was hoarse with emotion when this collapse finally concluded.
You see, Reimer feels that his time in Toronto is over. Deep down, he never thought this day would come, but there’s no putting the salt back in the shaker after this season. It has already been poured over an open wound.
Here Reimer was on Saturday in the building where he made his first NHL start – a place he had never before lost – and the Leafs, fittingly, couldn’t get him a victory on a night where he stopped 36 of 37 shots from the Ottawa Senators.
Doesn’t that just sum things up perfectly?
Reimer faced three breakways in this game. Ales Hemsky, Milan Michalek and Jean-Gabriel Pageau all got in alone on him and weren’t able to score. The 26-year-old was, in his own words, trying to “come in here and have a good last memorable game.”
He slipped into the past tense on a couple occasions when discussing the Leafs organization. He dodged the question entirely when asked specifically if he wanted to return in 2014-15.
“This was a team that I just wanted to play here for my whole career,” said Reimer. “It’s just sad that now there’s a question mark over it because I would have wanted it to be a sure thing for 20 years.”
More than any other single factor, the inability of the men in front of him to play even adequate defence is why he’s likely to move on. Remember where this story began – the night of Jan. 1, 2011, when the unheralded prospect made a spot start here in Ottawa after an injury to Jonas Gustavsson and soon made believers out of everyone.
Reimer followed a graveyard of goaltenders in the Toronto crease, none of whom had managed to give the team anything resembling a chance over a meaningful period of time. Between the departure of Ed Belfour in 2006 and Reimer’s arrival, it was a painful parade of disappointments or stop-gap standbys: Gustavsson, Vesa Toskala, Andrew Raycroft, Jean-Sebastien Giguere, Jean-Sebastien Aubin, Mikael Tellqvist, Scott Clemmensen, Justin Pogge, Martin Gerber, Curtis Joseph and Joey MacDonald.
You might be wondering what all of this has to do with Toronto’s now-concluded 2013-14 season – one that ended with a 2-12-0 freefall and left some inexplicably blaming Reimer. Well here’s the rub: Somewhere along the way this guy started getting held up to a ridiculous standard, one admittedly that he was partly responsible for because of some unbelievable stretches of play.
Consider how much better Reimer performed than those that came before him despite playing on a team that averaged more than 30 shots against per game every season he was here. What that did is skew the perspective on the Leafs and his role in their success or failure.
Reimer even led Toronto to the playoffs during last year’s lockout-shorted season – one in which management unsuccessfully tried to convince retiring veteran Miikka Kiprusoff to come over from Calgary at the trade deadline – and then stopped 72 of 74 shots in must-win Games 5 and 6 against Boston, thus setting the table for the infamous Game 7 collapse that some lay on his shoulders.
That helped bring about the acquisition of Jonathan Bernier over the summer and the unraveling of Reimer’s confidence after the newcomer stole his job. However, what remained constant throughout that entire period is that the Leafs were a porous defensive team that relied too heavily on its goaltenders to steal games.
So when Bernier’s body wore down and he suffered a groin strain in March and the Leafs had to turn back to a rattled Reimer and some of the scoring dried up, guess what happened? The team lost eight in a row in regulation and plummeted out of a playoff spot in spectacular fashion.
“We started playing some worse hockey the tighter it got and that’s not what good teams do,” said defenceman Cody Franson.
“For some reason we couldn’t nail down our defensive structure and system in the neutral zone and in our defensive zone,” he added. “For some reason, we just kept allowing too many odd man rushes, where our goalies need to make big saves and allowing missed coverages in our own zone that forced us into tough situations.”
It has only been the last few games that Reimer felt like himself again. In fact, he feels so good that he wishes there were still another 50 games to play.
While his struggles contributed to this season’s collapse, they are not the cause of it. The only blame that should be placed at his feet – and we say this facetiously – is that he did such a good job for so long of masking the true problems here.
When he wasn’t at his best, as he wasn’t for most of March, we saw how bad this team could have been all along. Reimer vows to walk away from this entire experience as a better goaltender.
“The game is mental,” he said. “Whether it’s (becoming the backup), whether it’s getting pulled, whether it’s the pressure … I just learned a lot mentally that will make me stronger.”
The question now centres around whether the Leafs will learn, too.
Because in Bernier they have a goaltender that is every bit as good as Reimer was for them at his peak. Maybe even a touch better, although the jury is certainly still out. However, the organization’s primary goal moving forward needs to be making sure that he isn’t asked to shoulder the same load.
Otherwise, they are doomed to end right back where they are now. And the last month hasn’t been very pleasant for anyone associated with the Leafs.
“It’s terribly disappointing and emotional,” said coach Randy Carlyle. “It’s almost like you get in a state of depression because it’s such a negative in your life. It’s as simple as that.
“You’re embarrassed about the way things unraveled for our hockey club.”
He was not yet willing to reveal what he would have done differently during this failed campaign. Carlyle plans to start sorting through the wreckage during a series of meetings in the coming days.
“There’s ample time to reflect back on ‘what ifs’ and (think about) what’s going to possibly happen,” he said. “Those are all things that are out of your control at this point.”
We already know that Brendan Shanahan has been installed as the top hockey man in the organization and on Monday we should learn how he plans to work with holdover general manager Dave Nonis. The future of Carlyle and his coaching staff is very much up in the air, as is the status of almost half the roster – Reimer included.
He is a restricted free agent so the Leafs technically hold final say over whether he stays or goes. Asked by Sportsnet on Saturday night if there’s any small chance he returns, Reimer replied: “Anything’s possible.”
For the last few years, the man who made the unlikely journey to the NHL from Morweena, Man., has constantly reminded us all of that.
The same can’t be said for the organization he played for.