Of course, there’s a problem with any well-thought-out rebuilding of a franchise: Sometimes hockey gets in the way of the best-laid plans.
Just when it might look like all the glittering talent is going to bring it home, the other guys don’t co-operate. Or the puck takes a screwy hop at an inopportune moment.
You can feel secure in the ability of those you send out there to perform but it tempts you to forget the potential of men with sticks on ice to do some sort of physical harm.
Hockey got in the way of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ run to a playoff berth for, oh, 57 minutes or so Saturday night. Right up to that point it looked like hockey might block the Leafs’ road to the post-season outright. But then Connor Brown deflected a puck past Marc-Andre Fleury with less than three minutes in regulation, the winning goal in Toronto’s 5-3 victory over Pittsburgh. Torontonians could safely set aside evenings to watch the home team in the playoffs for the first time in four years.
You thought it should have been easier once the lineups were submitted.
The Penguins waddled in with nothing to play for in the last weekend of the season, home-ice in the first round of the playoffs already tucked in their tiny little pockets. They didn’t have their best defencemen Kris Letang and Olli Matta available due to injury. They opted not to dress Evgeni Malkin, Chris Kunitz and Carl Hagelin, all listed as day-to-day, Saturday not being that particular day.
A team with nothing to play for and with a bunch of scrubs wound up taking Toronto to the limit.
The Leafs should have seen it coming.
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Sidney Crosby only has a push-button booster, no cruise control, no on-off toggle switch. And say what you will about Phil but he’ll always be Kesseling. And further, while a few who dress might not bring skill to the rink, anyone who steps on the ice is capable of mayhem. All of these combined to give Leafs fans agita that last through the second intermission.
Kessel struck first, crossing up defenceman Morgan Rielly and wiring a shot past Frederik Andersen. The volume turned up on the boos when fans realized who had scored and thought Kessel looked all too happy about it.
Then Tom Sesito entered the picture and earned a two-minute minor for goaltender interference and the enduring enmity of Leafs fans. He clocked Andersen, knocked him out of the game with a head shot and leaves the Leafs’ No. 1 goaltender’s status as uncertain going into Game 82. And later, well, not even those who oversee concussion protocol can say for sure.
Crosby did what Crosby does, scoring his 44th of the year on a power play, tying the game 2-all eight minutes into the second period. Thrust into the breach again, back-up Curtis McElhinney was blameless on that one.
So it stayed until Jake Gardiner kicked a puck past McElhinney for an own goal that gave Pittsburgh a 3-2 lead seven minutes into the third.
All of this set the stage for a goal from fourth-liner Kasperi Kapanen (his NHL career first) to tie the game with less than six minutes to go. And then Brown’s which will be replayed hundreds of times in days to come. And then an empty-netter from Auston Matthews with four seconds left, his 40th of the season and the easiest of the lot.
Coach Mike Babcock had an interesting take on it. To his mind, big games make veterans better and young guys nervous. It seemed to play out that way for a good long stretch. Early on the Leafs’ best players were their vets. James van Riemsdyk opened the scoring for Toronto with a stunning bit of skill and had two other five-star scoring chances turned aside on successive shifts. Tyler Bozak and Nazem Kadri stood out as Babcock would have expected.
But later in the game the Leafs’ difference-makers were their rookies and not their likely Calder candidates, Matthews and Mitch Marner. Matthews had four or five great chances and pucks were turned away on the goal-line while Marner really didn’t have much of an impact.
Instead, it was William Nylander making a great pass to set up Bozak’s goal and asserting himself as perhaps the best player on the ice. It was Kapanen, who had played hard but not effectively since getting called up from the Marlies, seizing the moment. It was Brown who had been buzzing around all night scoring the biggest goal of his life and his 20th of the season.
There’s no knowing what lies ahead other than a dinner date Sunday versus the Columbus Blue Jackets who, like Pittsburgh in Game 81, have nothing to play for. The Leafs will be playing for a chance to move up to third in the division and a series against Ottawa (rather than taking on No. 1 conference seed Washington as the second wild card).
Babcock said that he had experience with lots of playoff teams in the position of having nothing to play for in end-of-regular-season games in advance to the playoffs. He said that players looked not to get bumped around too much and maybe a few times Saturday night you caught a glimpse of a Penguin growing shy or mannerly.
Still if you’re confident that the Blue Jackets will mail it in in Game 82, you must have been playing euchre Saturday night.
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