The Leafs can learn something from Brad Marchand. He is enjoying himself

Open this photo in gallery:

It took three games for Brad Marchand and Tyler Bertuzzi to get past the awkwardness of a long separation. Once they did, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.

They had played together for a bit. They are friends. Marchand said on Wednesday that they are “similar people” who share “similar interests.”

Like putting the butt end of a stick into another person’s face at speed. That’s one of their shared pastimes. Marchand likes doing it, and Bertuzzi can’t figure out how to stop it.

Or can-opener’ing a guy at centre ice where all four officials plus 19,000 people can see it happening. The two of them do that so naturally that the Boston Bruins scored a goal in the middle of one of their embraces and no one noticed.

Marchand and Bertuzzi had several run-ins in Game 3. Marchand came out the better in all of them. By the end of the game, Bertuzzi was steaming around like Wile E. Coyote determined to drop an anvil on his own head.

The TV broadcast went over the uncalled butt-end about a million times in slow motion. Marchand swinging backward like a logger; Bertuzzi catching it straight in the nose; the nearest official picked and rolled out of the line of sight.

Then they switched to a live close-up of Marchand sitting on the bench. Somehow, he knew. He did something you never see an NHLer do midgame – he smiled. That’s how much he was enjoying himself.

Marchand is a dirty player, if by ‘dirty’ you mean smart and good. He’s able to turn his animus on and off so that it doesn’t get in the way of doing his job. He’d make an excellent submarine commander or newspaper columnist – he hurts people, but it’s never personal.

There is a lot of talk around this time of year about what makes Marchand special. He isn’t the most skilled Bruin, or the most cultured player full-stop. He isn’t big or fast. He scores important goals, but he doesn’t score often.

Toronto Maple Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe put it down to Marchand’s “art.”

“He gets calls,” Keefe said. “It’s unbelievable, actually, how it goes.”

At the best of times, Keefe speaks like he’s reading off a teleprompter only he can see. This was a rare moment of genuine wonder from him. His admiration shone through.

That line got a lot of play, but one buried after it was more revealing of the danger the Leafs are now in.

“We have to manage our way through [Marchand’s provocations], avoid situations where he can put us in those spots.” How exactly? By sitting in the stands instead of going out on the ice? There is no managing Marchand, and certainly no avoiding him. Once you put him at the forefront of your plans, he’s winning.

Lots of athletes are genial sociopaths. Plenty of them can snow referees. There is nothing Marchand knows or has that a hundred other hockey players don’t. So what is it that makes him so effective at being bad?

It is, I suspect, gratitude.

Everyone in sports talks about being in the moment, but think back to when you were just coming up. Everything you worried about was the wrong thing to worry about.

That universal moral affliction is amplified in athletes, for whom the next achievement is the only one that matters. It’s how they’ve got this far. Thankful people are rarely great at what they do. You have to work alongside a few highly successful psychos before you can accept that.

At 35 years old – ancient by hockey standards – Marchand is an exception. He can see the beauty all around him, while still enjoying the idea of putting someone in hospital. Nothing serious. Just for overnight observation.

“It’s not a given that you get the opportunity to play in the Stanley Cup playoffs. I just kind of woke up [on Wednesday] with that gratitude of understanding it’s a gift to play in this league.” Usually, when someone starts going on like this, I get the awful feeling they’re about to tell me they’ve always wanted to own a bar and maybe I could pay for it.

But with Marchand, you could tell he wasn’t trying to sell a version of himself. He was just talking. Nobody in sports just talks any more, as they would to a neighbour. That’s a gift, too.

You went from Marchand getting outside himself to see that we all have this one, short run at life and you should have the sense to recognize good luck when you’ve got it, to the Leafs dressing room. Not a lot philosophy going on in there.

Given the opportunity to fire back at Marchand, to have a little fun with the rivalry, or to show he’s grateful, Bertuzzi could not. He looked ashen.

“That stuff is going to happen with anyone,” he said about Marchand’s shenanigans. “It’s normal.”

If I can stoop to analysis, this is the Leafs most obvious problem – they can only enjoy themselves when they’re winning, and not even then. There is no joy in battle for this group. There is only pass or fail.

The Leafs always talk about building a culture, as though that’s something you get at Home Depot. Culture is people. It’s an attitude that flows from the top. Boston has Brad Marchand – a guy who merrily tries to take an eye out and then tells you straight-faced how happy that makes him – and Toronto has a bunch of guys who are so clenched up, it’s amazing they haven’t turned inside-out.

No wonder things go the way they do.

However this series turns out, it’s a lesson the Leafs might want to carry into summer. Instead of looking for right-handed defencemen who charge less than five million and don’t have a trade exemption, maybe try to get at least one guy who feels genuinely lucky to go to work every day, and wants everyone around him to feel the same way.