TORONTO – It’s the closest you’ll get to hearing Randy Carlyle question how everything went down with him and the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Upon returning to Air Canada Centre to face a Toronto team that has changed dramatically since he was fired less than two years, I asked the Anaheim Ducks coach if he had hoped to see the Leafs start a rebuild while he was still employed by the organization.
“I’d rather not comment on what I wanted,” Carlyle said Monday. “That’s a long time ago. The way things have developed I would say that they are in the direction that needed to be taken.”
The last game he coached for the Leafs came on Jan. 3, 2015 in Winnipeg and only seven players from that night remain. Phil Kessel, Dion Phaneuf, Cody Franson, David Clarkson, Joffrey Lupul, James Reimer and Jonathan Bernier are among those who have been shipped out or aren’t actively with the team as part of a massive overhaul.
Now occupying key roles for the Leafs are rookies Auston Matthews, Mitchell Marner, William Nylander and Nikita Zaitsev, among others.
“Obviously the skillset and the youth that they’ve got in their lineup is at a much higher skillset,” said Carlyle. “You pick where they pick in the draft – the supply of skill into their lineup and speed into the lineup has changed.”
Still, Carlyle doesn’t come across as an embittered former employee. Not in the least.
His contract with the Leafs saw him paid through the end of last season and allowed him to attend NHL games as a scout.
That put him in position to get re-hired by the Ducks after Bruce Boudreau was fired in the off-season. The main lesson Carlyle says he’s brought to the position from his time in Toronto is not sweating all of the small stuff quite so much.
“You’re here to win the war, you’re not here to win every little battle,” he said. “And there’s lots of battles along the way that come with a coaching staff and it comes with coaching in the NHL. It’s not easy and it’s not supposed to be easy.
“This is the best league in the world.”
Carlyle was a somewhat surprising choice by the Ducks – the team he guided to a Stanley Cup in 2007.
They entered Monday night sitting second in the Pacific Division with a 16-11-5 record and are shouldering big expectations from ownership and management.
Looking back on the circumstances around his firing in January 2015, Carlyle had no trouble cutting ties with the Leafs. His brother-in-law, John Stack, lost his battle with ALS the day after former GM Dave Nonis fired Carlyle over the phone.
That brought immediate perspective.
“It really didn’t take that long for me to move on and move forward,” said Carlyle. “I would say I dealt with the funeral of my brother-in-law and we went with family members and that for about 10 days – two weeks – and then I went back out to California and started to regroup and reset your sights on what you’re going to do next in your life.”
The Leafs have moved forward, too, by hiring Mike Babcock as a permanent replacement following Peter Horachek’s interim stint. The present looks pretty good and the future is bright.
Carlyle isn’t spending much time looking back.
He was behind the bench when the team blew a 4-1 lead to Boston in Game 7 of the 2013 playoffs and melted down in March the following season, but says he has “no qualms” about his tenure with the organization.
Carlyle joked that he missed seeing so many reporters at his daily scrums, but grew serious when asked if it’s tougher to coach in Toronto than it is elsewhere.
“It can be,” said Carlyle. “If you get worn down by it. You can never lose your enthusiasm for what you do. And it’s the people around you who get affected more than you do.
“I think coaches develop Teflon, to some degree, and you deal with it and you move forward.”
