Nazem Kadri #43 of the Toronto Maple Leafs is upended by Travis Hamonic #3 of the New York Islanders during the first period at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on February 12, 2015 in Uniondale, New York.Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
For most of the Toronto Maple Leafs players, and certainly their fans, the results of their final 24 games of the NHL season are irrelevant.
With the teardown of the roster officially approved by the owners, the decisions for the most part have been made on who goes and who stays. The latter is a short list, indeed, consisting of 20-year-old defenceman Morgan Rielly barring, say, a trade offer of the Connor McDavid pick in this year's NHL entry draft.
This doesn't mean the other 22 players on the roster have an automatic ticket out of town, although newcomer Olli Jokinen would be well-advised not to bring any more luggage to town than he brought from Nashville after Sunday's trade with the Predators. No problem, as Jokinen showed after Tuesday night's 3-2 loss to the Florida Panthers he's already sized up the situation around his temporary employer.
"The one thing I notice being here two days is a lot of negative energy around here," Jokinen said.
Before the NHL's March 2 trade deadline Leafs president Brendan Shanahan and general manager David Nonis will consider any offer on those remaining 22 bodies. However, there are still a few players still in the undecided category when it comes to the hi or bye scenario and for them the game results like Tuesday night's 3-2 loss to the Florida Panthers still have meaning.
The most prominent members of this category are Leafs centre Nazem Kadri and defenceman Jake Gardiner. Both are at roughly the same stage of their NHL careers, where judgement on the question of prospect or suspect is on the horizon.
Each player is 24 years old and Kadri is in his fifth NHL season while Gardiner is in his fourth. And the scouting reports on each players is inconclusive although there is agreement neither player is blazing a starry trail across the NHL sky with his development.
Conversations with scouts show most of them tend to think there is limited up-side to Gardiner. He is regarded as having far less hockey sense than Rielly and a defenceman who will give a team some offence but not much else because he will never figure out how to apply his talent day-in and day-out. In other words, a latter-day Matt Carle, someone who was highly regarded as a young player and managed to score a rich contract but never got out of the 30-point range.
Gardiner managed to score the rich contract in the summer of 2014 when Nonis signed him for five years and $20.25-million (all currency U.S.). And he is still regarded well enough there could be some teams willing to take a chance on him because Gardiner's $4-million cap hit is not bad if he lives up to his potential.
So, after the Panthers loss, Gardiner has 24 games left to show the Leafs bosses they are the ones who should take the chance on him rather than someone else. Well, it's been a slow start for both him and Kadri, who will be a restricted free agent come July 1.
In his last six games, or roughly the same period since it became known the Leafs were knocking the house down to the foundations, Gardiner was uneven at best. He ran up three points in the first two games but nothing in the next four, including Tuesday night against the Panthers. His play in his own end, always the problem with Gardiner, remains a thorny issue.
Kadri is in the same boat, although he has more talent. The problem is, Kadri has the same sort of bad habits as Gardiner, the attitude that he can stickhandle his way out of any jam, with the same sense that he is no closer to shedding them than he was two years ago.
Last season, there were encouraging signs from Kadri when he finished with 50 points. But this season has been a regression. Kadri now has 32 points in 56 games. In his last six games, Kadri registered four assists over three games and no points in the other three, hardly a sign his game is approaching the lofty place he thinks it resides. His defensive game is about the same as Gardiner's, not ready for polite company.
Tuesday's loss to the Panthers was fairly typical for Kadri. He wasn't bad in the first period, working the point on the power play and earning an assist on a goal. But he drifted into the ether the rest of the night, joining Gardiner on the missing list until the Leafs pulled goaltender Jonathan Bernier with more than two minutes left in the third period and Kadri got an assist on Phil Kessel's goal.
Despite the desultory showing on the ice, Kadri says he is well aware he could be in his final days as a Maple Leaf.
"I don't know how many times I've been asked that question in the last couple of weeks," he said. "At the end of the day it's out of our hands."
Well, at this rate the decision will be easy for Shanahan and Nonis. But the return isn't going to add much to the new construction.