After 11 losses, re-Leaf
‘Sick goal’ sparks first win in month, Clarkson scratched
The Leafs’ Joffrey Lupul watches teammate Richard Panik’s shot find the net behind Oilers goaltender Viktor Fasth on Saturday night at the Air Canada Centre. Toronto prevailed 5-1 to end an 11-game winless slide.
Gorgeous goal of the year: Morgan Rielly.
And there was the future flashing, a brighter place than the Maple Leafs have been inhabiting through this dreadful present.
End-to-end rush, just about, with the young defenceman — most valuable player on this roster as a keeper — weaving and dipsy-doodling around three Oilers, pursed by two more, clearly looking for a teammate to take his pass, then finishing on his own what he’d started, cutting into the slot and snapping a wrister high past Viktor Fasth, unassisted.
A 3-0 lead en route to a 5-1 finish and James Reimer but 2.3 seconds away from his 12th career shutout.
“In my head I was trying to make a pass,” Rielly said afterwards, covering himself in modesty. “They just kind of took the lane away so I thought I’d try to make a move. And it just happened to work out. “That’s all it was.” Oh sure. Highlight-loop goal, Reimer’s say-so: “I’d have to watch it again, but it was a pretty sick goal.” One of your prettiest ever, Morgan? “I don’t know. I’ll have to ask my parents what they think. They probably know better than me.”
But admitting when pushed that, um, yeah, he’d probably go home and watch it on the late night sports broadcasts.
And Reimer — making make-to-back starts in the bugaboo illness absence of Jonathan Bernier — who just 24 hours previously, after Toronto’s inexcusably lousy effort in Newark, implored his teammates to step up, start playing like men.
Also intriguingly not dressed was David Clarkson, a healthy scratch for the first time since he signed with Toronto two summers ago, maybe for the first time in his life. Interim coach Peter Horachek has suddenly gone all hard-ass.
Anyway, all the Leafs but most notably boy-man Rielly must have taken Reimer’s advice to heart because, after an eye-glazing first period Saturday night, they snapped to, put some lead in their pencil.
Been a long time since we’ve witnessed either this kind of brilliance — Rielly on the goal-driving fly — or that level of joyful eruption — Rielly in celebration — around these Leafs.
For the 20-year-old, it was his first goal in 24 games stretching back to Dec. 13, when Toronto was a highflying offensive powerhouse and looking safe as houses for the playoffs.
A cruel mirage, as it’s turned out, with Toronto plunging through the standings — nowhere near as gracefully as those soldiers who rappelled from ceiling to ice in pre-game ceremonies for the ninth annual Canadian Armed Forces Night — in the seven weeks since.
“We’re not happy in here,” Rielly had said earlier in the day, after an optional morning skate that actually drew half the roster into their hockey gear, where usually it’s just Rielly and maybe Jake Gardiner and Leafs on the semi-gimp. “We’re working hard, but just not getting the results.”
We’d dispute that claim — the working hard part, which hasn’t been much on display, certainly not in Friday’s stinker against the Devils, nor most of the 11 in a row Toronto has dropped since a 5-2 W over Columbus on Jan. 9. Been nothing but horror ever since.
Averted, mercifully: The Dirty Dozen. Twelve defeats in a row, that would have been, and surely to God not even detested Toronto — the view looking in, from outside — deserved so ghastly an abomination as that, a 12-pack case of ineptitude.
“It’s hard to escape,” Rielly had said of the echo chamber in which the Leafs have existed since the turn of the calendar year, a reversal of fortune that cost Randy Carlyle his job and, if it wouldn’t have looked so unseemly, might rightfully have jettisoned interim Horachek out of here too. (Gone back to the imaginary job we’ve given him, as a homicide dick, because he so much looks the part.)
That victory versus Columbus, Horachek’s only other win since assuming the position behind the bench, also marked the last time Toronto reeled off three goals in one period, as they did against Edmonton in the middle frame Saturday.
Okay, it was the Oilers, secondworst team in the NHL. By the Leafs, sixth from the bottom in the NHL. But there’s been so little to smile about ’round these parts that one (1) dominant win is doubtless over-magnified. At least they got that monkey (Darwin, the Ikea macaque?) off their back.
And there were added sidebar upticks for Toronto, not the least of which was Phil Kessel, stuck on three goals since Dec. 16, a span of 22 games. But fourth-liner Richard Panik, with his first in 15 games, too. Mike Santorelli put the Leafs up 4-2, 39 seconds into the third. Peter Holland double-deked, forehand-- backhand, his first goal in 11 games, sent in on the breakaway on a splendid play by Stephane Robidas.
So, a bunch of Leafs got off the schneid at the expense of the Oilers, who are blessed with tremendous speed but are susceptible to pressure and awfulness in their own end.
In the cold light of day, the morning after, Toronto’s 23rd win of the season won’t mean much. No reason to get all heel-clicking about it. This is still a rotten team, closer to seabed than a wild-card playoff berth, which is nothing but a figment of the imagination and even hardcore Leaf Nation has thrown in that Shammy.
Truth is, setting Saturday night aside, many of these Leafs have checked out already, the only kind of checking they’ve exhibited through a prolonged period of futility and emotional hollowness.
Spare me the tortured upside positivity; that this team is at least applying the defence-first system imposed by Horachek. Many hockey experts profess that the run-andgun game doesn’t win championships. In Toronto we’d apparently happily settle for just winning a game, finally, against Edmonton. Oy.
These Leafs, recall, were doing that in a goal-galore way, under the tutelage of canned coach Randy Carlyle. The Horachek Principle remains painful to watch.
At the end of his patience tether 24 hours earlier, following that spectacularly inept performance versus the Devils, which even the endlessly nurturing Horachek characterized as “soft.” Back to stiff upper lip by Saturday, preaching one-for-all and all-for-one. “The way you get through tough things is together. You have to lean on each other. You have to have everybody stand up at different times, different people, to say the right things. And you have to hold each other accountable. There has to be a higher standard and more urgency.”
As, in fact, there was a sense of urgency in the Leafs Saturday night, more energy and zip than they’ve shown in ages, with every line in on the scoring action. But don’t be fooled. This is still a team under chaotic transition, a club that has sacrificed the speed and transitional tempo that had been signature strengths.
Insanity is often described as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. By that definition these Leafs are wacko.
Some of it is not their fault. As composed, this isn’t a team that can play a grinding in-the-trenches style. For the first three months of the season they were either wildly off or wildly on, hence the dramatic up-down streaks. It was offensive flair and a massively productive first line that racked up the victories. But Kessel isn’t going to turn the light red on shackled to his own blue-line and James van Riemsdyk suddenly needs a GPS to find the front of the net.
The Leafs found the net well enough on this night, granted.
But they still couldn’t make it through the evening without one smack-your-head boner — this time leaving Luke Gazdic insufficiently covered in front of the net that he managed to get off a shot that beat Reimer. First goal of the season for Gazdic and poof, there went Reimer’s shutout.
Of course, not a cuss word passed Opie’s lips. “AAAAARRRRGGGGHHH,” he said.
Really. That’s a direct quote.