Toronto Maple Leafs goalie Frederik Andersen (31) fishes the puck out of the net as the St. Louis Blues celebrate one of their goals during a 5-1 Leafs loss Thursday.Billy Hurst
Given the excessive volume that always accompanies the Toronto Maple Leafs, their first serious skid of the season is setting off the usual panic in the Leafs Nation hen house.
Even though the problems need immediate attention if the Leafs are to continue their surprising run toward the NHL playoffs, a consideration of all the factors involved does not reveal any serious flaws in the organization's grand plan. The team's reaction to a stretch of adversity – a 2-3-1 record in the six games they were without their best defenceman, Morgan Rielly, and their current three-game losing streak – should not be taken as the Leafs hitting a wall but as a team showing its true status.
The Leafs are a young, developing team and reacted to their recent troubles as such a team usually does; given the number of problems that came along almost at once, it is no surprise they overwhelmed the team.
These problems need to be dealt with quickly or the Leafs will see the one advantage they have with the schedule melt away. At present, the Leafs have five games in hand on the Boston Bruins, whom they trail by three points for the last sure playoff spot in the Atlantic Division. That means a loss in Boston on Saturday night will not be a disaster, but it also means the Leafs cannot be cavalier with those games in hand.
However, barring any more serious injuries to key players (and that is a risky assumption indeed), the only problem the Leafs can't do anything about is the schedule. The rest can be handled with varying degrees of success.
Starting with Saturday's game in Boston, the Leafs have 65 days left in the regular season and 33 games to play. That leaves 32 off-days – not a bad number for a team with as many young legs as the Leafs.
The trouble is, an NHL schedule never runs as neatly as play one night, take the next one off. The Leafs have three sets of back-to-back home and away games in February alone, plus two more in March and April and one set of back-to-back road games for a total of 12.
Then they end their schedule with a tough week of five games in six nights. In their last four games, the Leafs have to face the Washington Capitals, Tampa Bay Lightning, Pittsburgh Penguins and Columbus Blue Jackets. That is quite a closing act.
What the six games without Rielly showed is that there is a significant gap in talent between the Leafs' best young players and the bottom of the roster.
This problem is not confined to the defence. Equally telling was the loss in December of fourth-line centre Ben Smith to a broken finger. He returned to the lineup on Thursday along with Rielly. The best the Leafs could come up with as a replacement for Smith was 21-year-old Frédérik Gauthier. Smith is an ordinary player, but Gauthier still could not fill his skates. He struggled with the pace of the NHL game and was weak in his own end. By the time the Leafs returned him to the Toronto Marlies farm team this week, head coach Mike Babcock was barely playing him 10 minutes a game.
This is why making assumptions about injuries is so risky. If one of the Leafs' top three centres – Auston Matthews, Nazem Kadri or Tyler Bozak – should be lost, there could be enormous problems. The Leafs do have options – William Nylander could be shifted back to his old position, and the overall quality of the team's top nine forwards is such that the damage might be mitigated – but there is no equal replacement for any of those three players.
On the plus side, now that Rielly had one game to get the considerable rust off his game – he was on the ice for three of the Blues' five goals in Thursday's loss in St. Louis – the defence should be better. And that includes putting Matt Hunwick back in for the ineffective Martin Marincin.
Also, despite the cramped schedule ahead, in some respects the worst part of it is behind the Leafs. The five-day break that was instituted this season as part of the collective agreement proved to be disruptive rather than relaxing.
The Leafs had theirs starting Jan. 8, which came on the heels of the Christmas break and ended just two weeks before yet another break – for the NHL all-star game. The stops and starts work against getting into a winning rhythm, although the Leafs did post a 7-3-2 record in January.
But the month was troublesome for the team's most important player. Goaltender Frederik Andersen was out-of-sync in January, his save percentage dipping to .902 from the sparkling .948 he posted in December.
Over all, though, it must be remembered that the Leafs are way ahead of their rebuilding plan. The mediocrity of the Eastern Conference means they could still find themselves in the playoffs, but true success is still a couple of years away.