New season, new blood, new story.
That was the plan, anyway.
Rookie Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan couldn’t have known how things were going to unfold as his club renewed their decades old rivalry against the Montreal Canadiens to officially start the 2014-15 season.
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But he sure sounded like he knew what he was talking about before the puck dropped.
“Identity isn’t what you say the afternoon of the home opener, it’s something you earn on the ice,” he announced. “We’ve made clear to our players that there are opportunities for them to continue to write their own story as individuals and as a team, but that’s done through their play.”
But his vision? What was his vision?
“The puck is something we have to own a bit more,” he said. “There are teams built different ways to own the puck, but that’s the key to the hockey game, whether you’re a big, tough, dump-and-chase team or a skilled, quick, puck-handling team. Everyone is looking to control the puck.”
But how?
Take a hint, he implied, from the new-look Leafs lineup that got rolled out after the 48th Highlanders left the ice and the sold-out crowd at the Air Canada Centre began to roar.
“To me grit is so much more than dropping your gloves,” he said of the first Randy Carlyle coached Leafs team that started the season without at least one designated fighter. “We truly tried to focus on individuals who would give us the best chance to win games.
“It doesn’t matter what your size is, where you come from,” he said. “To me, as the temperature of the game goes up, players that relish that moment and don’t shrink in that role are players that impress us as a management group.”
It sounded awesome. It sounded presidential. It sounded like there was a plan being mapped out.
It still needs work.
The Leafs dropped their home opener 4-3 in the most Leafs way possible – tying the score with two minutes to play and then giving up the winner in the final minute.
Another season, another blown finish. It was like old times.
In the absence of on-ice success the Leafs could use some of Shanahan’s off-ice vision — something definitive; something direct.
With the Leafs there’s never a question among the faithful. The enthusiasm is always there, last night maybe more than ever as the downtown core was the host of two separate out-door viewing parties thousands strong.
“You know it’s an exciting night for a lot of people,” said Leafs alternate captain Joffrey Lupul. “You want to make sure it ends the right way for them.”
Stephane Robidas, the jagged-nosed 37-year-old defenceman who the Leafs acquired for his steadying qualities on the ice and in the dressing room was rejoicing at being back in hockey country after spending the last decade in Dallas with a brief stop in Anaheim.
“When you play there you miss the buzz, the vibe before the game,” said Robidas, who logged twenty minutes of ice time in just his second game since twice breaking his leg last year. “I want to fully enjoy this experience.”
The problem is the love is lost in support of a fragile club. Last season started great, but the underlying analysis suggested the Leafs were simply being lucky. And it ended awfully, which seemed to confirm the analysis.
For now Shanahan’s vision is all they’ve got.
It would be nice to say all of what he was preaching was on display during the Leafs home opener. But at the very least, some of it was.
Carlyle lamented the middle period, in which the Leafs resorted to their sloppy ways with the puck, not to mention the ending, but he found some solace it what he deemed about 45 minutes of hard work from his team.
With fighters Frazer McLaren and Colton Orr waived before the season, into the breach stepped 5-foot-8 speedster Brandon Kozun, a career AHLer picked up in a trade last season and Stuart Percy, the No. 25 pick in the 2011 draft made their NHL debuts.
Together they gave signs that guys that can use their speed to open up the ice and pressure the puck (Kozun) or defencemen who can calmly wait that extra split second to make a pass can help shape a hockey game (Percy).
Kozun flashed his wheels on the first shift, beating Montreal Canadiens defenceman Andrei Markov wide to start a long stretch in the Habs end. A couple of moments later he corralled a centering pass with his skate, got a shot on net and earned his first career point as linemate Nazem Kadri tipped it home.
“He mad an impact. We controlled the puck very well, and we had no problem getting the puck through the neutral zone,” said Kadri. “It’s just hangin on to it and making those proper plays which I think we did tonight.”
Maybe now Kozun will get noticed in the street. He didn’t last year during his run with the AHL Marlies and hadn’t really yet during his first training camp with the big club. But he got the gist of what Leafs Nation is all about.
“You get a little bit of a taste,” said Kozun, whose brother, mother and girlfriend were on hand for his NHL debut. “But you don’t understand what it’s really like until you’re in it. It’s insane.”
Kozun’s effort helped tie the score 1-1 as the Leafs had fallen behind in the season’s first five minutes as the top line failed to get the puck deep on a line change and Dion Phaneuf gut flung aside by the Max Pacioretty, who snuck a puck under the pad of Jonathan Bernier who was fooled when the Habs winger fanned on the puck.
Percy was the surprise starter alongside Phanuef on the Leafs power play late in the first period and he proved worthy when he snuck below the goal line and made a well-timed pass to Tyler Bozak.
“I thought Stew had a heck of a hockey game,” said Carlyle.
The Leafs led 2-1 after the first period and were tied 2-2 midway through the third until Toronto native P.K. Subban, providing some early returns on his eight-year, $72-million contract, beat Bernier low-blocker when he was given way too much time in the slot.
The Leafs got that one back though, as the man the Leafs secretly hope can develop into a player close to Subban’s impact, second-year, defenseman Morgan Rielly, tied the score 3-3 with 2:20 left.
But it didn’t last. Maybe it couldn’t. The Canadiens Tomas Plekanec was credited with a goal after Alex Galchenyuk whipped the puck from the corner in front of the Leafs net and got lucky when it deflected off Percy’s skate with just 53 second to play, and that was it.
With the Leafs the beginnings are always the same: full of promise, hope and the allure of a clean sheet of ice to right past wrongs.
As Shanahan said, they have the chance to write themselves a new story.
It’s the endings man. They just need to work on the endings.
