Apr 7, 2017
Leafs still in control of their own destiny
With two games left in the regular season, Leafs head coach Mike Babcock is trying to extinguish mounting concern over his team’s missed opportunities to clinch a postseason berth.
TORONTO – At the halfway point of the season, Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock began dousing the flames of high expectations engulfing his team and their unexpected positioning as part of the league’s playoff puzzle.
And now, Babcock is using the same philosophy to extinguish mounting concern over his team’s missed opportunities to actually clinch a postseason berth.
The Leafs could have punched their ticket with a win in either of their last two games, but lost them both by a decisive 4-1 score. After an impressive 8-1-1 run, Toronto has dropped back-to-back games in regulation for the first time since mid-February.
As long as the Leafs can gain two points over their last two regular season games, the Tampa Bay Lightning and New York Islanders won’t be able to catch them for the Eastern Conference’s second wild card spot. Grab one or fewer points and the scenarios are increasingly precarious. But the Maple Leafs will be in control of their destiny until the end.
“What I like about this opportunity is we have to earn our way in,” Babcock said Friday after a team meeting at MasterCard Centre. “That’s what it’s about.
“Nobody’s going to give it to you. It’s having these opportunities to grow your game in moments that matter. They’ve all had these opportunities at different levels just not at this level so let’s [take care of] business.”
With their first chance to clinch on Tuesday, then Leafs were facing the league-leading Washington Capitals after a win in Buffalo the night before. Simply put, they were too tired on the second night of a back-to-backs (and the end of a road trip at that) to feel the weight of the moment.
Skip ahead to Thursday against Tampa Bay and that wasn’t the case. Toronto turned in a wholly uninspired performance against a Lightning club dripping with desperation to keep their own playoff hopes alive.
“I don’t know. They probably wanted it more than us,” said Auston Matthews. “The [Lightning] won all their 50-50 battles, they were on top of us and we didn’t have an answer for it so we have to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
The Leafs have been a loose and relaxed group all season, but as the competition becomes more significant they need to strike a better balance between being too complacent and too unsure.
“Maybe we were a bit tight last night given what’s at stake,” said Morgan Rielly. “Moving forward we have to work on that, be a bit more loose and not worry about what’s going on around us.
“[That said], these are big games and we have to be ready. It’s good to be relaxed, but these are important games and we know what we have to do.”
All season long, everything the Leafs have done has been part of their learning process - playing up to nine rookies in a game and being patient with the evolution of lines and defence pairings.
While individual players may have had success elsewhere, the Leafs franchise hasn’t established a winning culture in years. And doing so comes with its own lessons.
“[Thursday] was a big game, and when it’s a big game you get more emotions - good and bad,” explained Brian Boyle, a veteran of 100 NHL playoff games. “You try to learn to taper those and bring it down.
“No one in here is dwelling on last night. It was an opportunity, but we have more opportunities to clinch and that’s what we need to understand and remember.”
“What you’ve got to do is trust the guys in the room,” Babcock added. “You’ve got to trust your structure and you’ve got to come out and compete and you can’t let nerves get in the way and that’s part of growing up.”
The window for applying their lessons is rapidly closing, but the Leafs refuse to sound any alarm bells. The pressure the Maple Leafs are sensing feels motivated more by their own expectations than that of the city or its fan base - born of a singular belief that they’d be able to prove people wrong.
“We knew right from the start we were going to be better than [others] thought,” said Rielly. “It’s not as if our goal was to [just] grow and get better, we wanted to make the playoffs.
“Now that we’re here, I think we’re happy we have a chance to play two good teams.
“Are these games going to be tough? Yes. But that’s what we want. We want to play these meaningful games at this time of the season.”