•Mike Babcock learned how to properly prepare and approach games from coaching Red Wings
•Maple Leafs dominated for nearly 40 minutes
•Toronto tightened up down the stretch of the game yet again
The Toronto Maple Leafs are getting down to winning time, something that for all the promise of their young roster, they have yet to experience.
Their head coach, Mike Babcock, has done his share, both while coaching the Detroit Red Wings to the last of the four Stanley Cups they’ve won since their record 25-year playoff streak began, and internationally for Canada in various shapes and forms.
It was that resume that the Leafs paid $50 million for a couple of summers ago.
What did he learn in his decade running one of the most consistently successful teams in all of professional sports?
“It’s part of who you are, obviously,” said Babcock on Tuesday. “I can remember individual meetings with Shanahan, [Nick] Lidstrom, [Kris] Draper over the years that just made you think about things differently. Steve Yzerman, Dominik Hasek, the way he approached the game. Chris Chelios. There were so many great players that taught you so many different things.
“[But] maybe the thing I learned the most there was that when I arrived I thought you had to be ready for the game at nine in the morning,” Babcock said. “I didn’t know that if you were ready for the game at nine you wore yourself out all day you had no energy at night. What I learned from the best players is that they could be watching their son play on TV three minutes before they dropped the puck and they’d be ready to go.”
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Translation?
For all of his reputation as hockey’s ultimate stickler for detail – “It pushes you to be a better player,” said Leafs newcomer Brian Boyle, a veteran of all of four games under Babcock, the Leafs head coach recognizes that you can only try so hard. At some point you need to relax, lighten up your grip and just play.
The context was that his young Leafs, in trying to put the finishing touches on a season that has exceeded even the most optimistic expectations, may have been tightening up with the finish line in sight.
Like Tuesday night for example.
At some point they either will or they won’t. But it won’t be dull.
For 39 minutes against the Red Wings at the Air Canada Centre the Leafs looked like a team without a care in the world, playing with the kind of pace and skill that hints at Stanley Cup parades to come. Super-rookie Mitch Marner created a goal out of thin air on the second shift of the game, as he stole a puck, set up Tyler Bozak with an open net and then counted his 36th assist when former Red Wing Alexey Marchenko got his first goal of the season off Bozak’s rebound and first as a Leaf with just 67 seconds gone in the game.
Five minutes later Marner helped out again as James van Riemsdyk got his 20th – although his first in 14 games – to give the Leafs a 2-0 lead.
If anything, their dominance was even more complete in the second period with Detroit not even mustering a shot on goal through the first 12 minutes of play and Nazem Kadri putting the Leafs up 3-0 on a perfect setup from William Nylander that Kadri easily buried in the top left corner over the Wings’ Petr Mrazek.
All was good. The Leafs were playing so well they had taken their own crowd out of the game, ruthless efficiency not exactly the kind of thing that gets the pulse racing.
But that changed quickly. Detroit’s first good chance of the second period was a point-blank wrister from Riley Sheahan that Leafs goalie Frederik Andersen handled smartly with 39 seconds left – it was just his 15th shot of the game, on his way to facing 24 total.
But just 12 seconds later a turnover by the Leafs at their own blue line ended up behind Anderson, making the game 3-1 as Gustav Nyquist benefitted from the work of Red Wings stalwart Henrik Zetterberg. Then 38 seconds into the third period Nyquist scored again, once more from Zetterberg, who now has 22 points in his last 17 games as the Red Wings captain desperately tried to heave his club over the finish line and into the post-season one more time, a near-impossible task given they’re 12 points behind the New York Islanders for the final wild-card spot with 18 games to play.
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But in the matter of about two minutes the Leafs went from in charge to fire drill, the last 19 minutes of the game an exercise in ‘please don’t screw this up.’
“We skated good, we really took it to them,” said Babcock after the game. “… and [then] here we are again, we’ve been here before [giving up leads], we’ve all seen it. Some people might think it’s an excuse, but I don’t think it’s an excuse, but when you have a veteran group that’s been through it before, someone goes out, calms everyone down … [with us] it’s like a feeding frenzy. So as much as we talk about it, not much happens.
How does he avoid having his young team tighten up when things start going sour, Babcock was asked.
“Obviously I don’t,” he said. “You’re watching it just like me. I have all these great things I say, but none of them seem to work.”
“The reality is we’re in a great spot, we’re up 3-2, we’re at home … play the game. When you’re loose and driving you’re flying, you’re on top of the other team, you look fast. When you tighten up you look slow. That’s just the reality of being in the league and being expected to win every night.”
The Leafs are beginning to feel the gravity of that, but the trick is feeling it and not letting it affect how you play, at least negatively.
“He’s communicated that to the whole team,” said Marner, the game’s first star who bounced back well after struggling during the Leafs’ recent California trip. “We know how good we can be when we want to be and that’s the team we have to start realizing we can be. When we start realizing that we’re a lot better in here, everyone’s loose and we’re having fun and that’s when we’re at our best.”
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“When you have a veteran group that’s been through it before, someone goes out, calms everyone down … [with us] it’s like a feeding frenzy.”
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They were at their best for nearly 40 minutes Tuesday night. It was just enough. They’ll wake up Wednesday morning one point shy of the Islanders for the second wild card and two points behind Boston for third place in the Atlantic Division.
But it wasn’t without moments – the final five minutes of the game, it seemed, were an exercise in how not to close out a game that was otherwise comfortably in hand, but they survived it.
“Anytime you have been struggling, usually the first one you win is not pretty anyway,” Babcock said. “It was pretty early, but not pretty late.”
