If the organizations of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Arizona Coyotes could talk to each other, the conversation would be an awkward one.
"What are YOU doing here?"
The Leafs, after all, are a (relatively) ancient hockey club in their 99th season, and the richest, most valuable franchise in hockey. Pretty much every game is a sellout, no matter what. If bank statements produced banners, they’d have 25 hanging in the Air Canada Centre.
The Coyotes? Not so much. Ripped out of the hockey heartland and planted piteously in the desert, they have lurched from bankruptcy to irrelevance, surviving only because Gary Bettman says they must, 28th in NHL attendance last season.
Yes, from 30,000 feet you might say these two sports businesses barely belong in the same league together. But they are in the same league, and in a competitive sense, shockingly, they’re roughly equals.
It’s like Donald Trump and a debt-ridden college sophomore being stuck in the same elevator en route to the same minimum wage job interview.
The poorest-of-the-poor Coyotes were even worse than the richest-of-the-rich Leafs last season, but surprisingly competent Arizona beat the Leafs 4-3 Monday night and are now seven points better than Toronto early in the 2015-16 season.
The Coyotes might argue they shouldn’t be compared to Toronto any more. Well, it’s October. We’ll see.
So how did these strange bedfellows, the Leafs and Coyotes, fall into the sack together?
Well, needless to say, it’s a long story, and a complicated one. But at the core is a very straightforward reality; these are two teams that have struggled for much of the past decade, and neither has very much to show for it – yet, at least – in terms of special young players gleaned from the NHL draft as rewards for being lousy.
The Coyotes have missed the playoffs nine of the last 12 years. They’ve drafted 117 players since starting to miss the post-season regularly in 2001, seven of whom are on the roster.
Only smooth, 25-minutes-a-night Oliver Ekman-Larsson has established himself as an upper-level NHLer. Max Domi is just getting started and looks like he might.
"He’s a really good story for us right now," said a smiling head coach Dave Tippett.
The three first rounders taken by Arizona in the last two years, Dylan Strome, Nick Merkley and Brendan Perlini, are still developing in junior.
Peter Mueller, however, was a bust, Kyle Turris bloomed in Ottawa, not the desert, Brandon Gormley still hasn’t panned out and he’s now a member of the Colorado organization.
The Leafs, meanwhile, have been inactive nine of the last 10 spring playdowns, starting in 2006. Since then, in two of those years they traded away their first rounders, and of the 70 players they have taken over that period, three were in their lineup Monday night.
They can hope talented Morgan Rielly, with a gorgeous goal Monday night and a terrific leap to keep a puck in the offensive zone in the dying minutes, might one day be as good as Ekman-Larsson. We’re getting close to wondering how much more Nazem Kadri can be.
Mitch Marner was taken after Strome and is also in junior, while William Nylander was selected four slots before Perlini and is a point-a-game player with the AHL Marlies.
Both clubs have invested in the analytics game in the past year. Maloney hired Tim Bernhardt away from Dallas to head up the club’s scouting, while the Leafs have essentially assigned their future to the keen eyes of Mark Hunter.
Hunter will have two first round picks next June (assuming Pittsburgh makes the playoffs) and a high second (their own), so he’ll be able to take some big swings. Head coach Mike Babcock, signed for a cool $50 million in the kind of investment the Coyotes could never dream of affording, has signalled he’s on board with this approach, saying getting more picks for Hunter has got to be a priority.
The fact that Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, controlled by Bell and Rogers, has produced playoff teams in the NBA and MLS this year, might encourage a Leaf fan, as might the success of the Rogers-owned Blue Jays. Then again, the Leafs are a different animal entirely.
Based on Monday night, the Coyotes certainly have reason to be somewhat more positive about their immediate future. Tippett said after last season’s misery the club decided it wanted "impact growth," and Domi, who scored the first goal of the game, has supplied it. He and Anthony Duclair, acquired from the Rangers in the Keith Yandle deal, have been turning heads.
The Leafs didn’t get a shot until nine minutes into the game and trailed 3-1 at the halfway mark, suffering through yet another soggy and disheartening goaltending performance. With apologies to the Flames, Blue Jackets and Ducks, the 1-5-2 Leafs may indeed be the NHL’s worst team this fall and should find themselves with a very good mathematical chance of winning next spring’s draft lottery and the chance to draft Auston Matthews. The fact that the lottery has been changed and the worst team’s chances of picking first have been reduced, well, that fits well into the sad Leaf narrative of the past decade.
Byron Froese, interestingly, was the Leaf farmhand summoned from the minors last week, not Nylander or Connor Brown or Kasperi Kapanen. That was a small statement indicating a determination to stick with the plan and use various vets on short-term deals at the NHL level, different from Arizona’s decision to give youngsters big responsibility this season in order to immediately change the vibe.
There’s really only one way, long-term, to make the future bright for both the Leafs and Coyotes, and that’s getting much, much better at the draft and at sculpting drafted players. Marner and Nylander have to turn out to be frontline players. Same goes for Domi and Strome.
If that happens, well, perhaps one day these teams could be strange bedfellows in a much nicer flat in a swankier neighbourhood.
