It’s crunch time for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Winners of just five of their past 18 games dating back to the end of January, the Leafs’ current five-game losing streak has allowed teams such as the Boston Bruins and New York Islanders to pass them and others such as Florida, Tampa Bay and Philadelphia to close to within a point or two.
The Leafs have looked like a surprising playoff team all season, but now sit on the outside looking in, although they do hold two games in hand of the Bruins. But that Toronto team Leafs Nation was so optimistic about after a quarter of a season hasn’t been the same for a while now.
“The Leafs haven’t played like a playoff team for about a month now,” Sportsnet’s Chris Johnston said on the Jeff Blair Show Tuesday morning. “We’ve seen far more uneven performances lately. They haven’t scored to the degree they were earlier in the year and they’re now upon what will probably be a defining stretch of their season, both this week and next week when they head down to Florida and play both the Lightning and Panthers — huge divisional games.”
Indeed the Leafs have managed just eight goals in their past five games, a tough stretch that included home games against high-end Eastern teams in the Rangers and Canadiens, and then running a three-game road trip gauntlet through California.
The good news is Toronto’s schedule lightens up a little over the next two weeks, in that four of the seven games are at home and they don’t have a back-to-back until seeing Columbus and New Jersey on March 22-23.
On Monday, Jim Ralph spoke of the Leafs needing to show “character” down the stretch, so Tuesday’s game would seem to be a great example of that. Coming off a three-day break, if the Leafs were to lose this home game against the Detroit Red Wings, the Eastern Conference’s last-placed team, it’s fair to say they would be close to crisis mode.
Considering how tight the playoff race is, and how good some of these late-charging teams are, Johnston believes it’s going to take a mighty run to get into an Atlantic Division or wild card spot.
“Going on a 12-6 type of run might be what’s needed to get the Leafs into the playoffs,” Johnston said. “Just getting those kind of breaks in the schedule are pretty unusual and not to have any back-to-backs now for a couple weeks is very positive because they can essentially start Freddy Andersen in every game. I think there should be a little more energy in the group and actually a little time to prepare for the games rather than just trying to bail water.”
And preparation will be key for the Leafs, a young team that is really going to learn what it means to be in a playoff race and how you navigate it. The game changes this late in the season, when discipline and defence become the main focus and what sets apart the surprise teams who still have to grow, and the ones who are ready to win right now.
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No longer can Toronto rely on playing loose and winning on the strength of their offence — it’s essentially playoff hockey now.
“It’s just a tough time of year I think to see high-scoring games,” Johnston said. “It’s going to reward the teams that can lock things down a bit.
“I think Mike (Babcock) wants to make sure his players have their minds on the right things right now because it’s fun to play in those 6-5 types of games of which we’ve seen the Leafs a lot this year. I just don’t anticipate we’ll see very many of them between now and the end of the regular season and absent those kind of wide open games where you’re trading chances, the path to success is clearly to play much more controlled and limit what you’re giving up against.”
The schedule, for now, appears to be on the Maple Leafs’ side. But can the youngsters adjust their games well enough to succeed in this more clamped-down race to the finish?
We’ll get a sense Tuesday night when Toronto meets Detroit.
