A year ago, the Maple Leafs beat one of the better teams in the Western Conference, but the defeated team was hardly impressed.
“That may have been the softest team I’ve seen this year,” one of the coaches said privately after the game. “Believe me, they’re not going anywhere.”
It turned out the coach was right.
This season, the Leafs played the same team, leaving a vastly different impression.
“The way Chief (coach Craig Berube) has them playing, they’re a different team now. They’re going to be a handful for anyone in the playoffs,” the coach said.
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This seems to be the external view of the Maple Leafs around the NHL at this, the halfway mark of the first season of coach Berube and the second season of general manager Brad Treliving. After years of being looked upon as hockey’s most talented, overpaid playoff disaster, the book on the Leafs is changing rapidly.
These Leafs are being taken seriously. These Leafs, in a watered down version of the Eastern Conference, are suddenly in a place to be looked at as contenders.
This is 41 games of an 82-game season and the Leafs find themselves in a place they have not known before.
They are four points ahead of the Stanley Cup-champion Florida Panthers.
They are nine points ahead of arch-rival Boston Bruins.
They are 12 points ahead of multi-time Stanley Cup-champion Tampa Bay Lightning.
They are 17 points ahead of the imploding New York Rangers, who were once thought to be contenders in the East.
In the East, only the Washington Capitals — with that roster — had a better first half than the Leafs.
The East is that open this season.
And because of that, the Leafs have a startling opportunity in a season in which they’ve played a lot of time without Auston Matthews, their captain and best player, on the ice. And then he played, until recently, he didn’t seem very Matthews-like.
The Leafs have been fortunate that Mitch Marner has been exceptional in the first half. Marner currently sits ahead of Connor McDavid and Nikita Kucherov in league scoring.
He will get Hart Trophy votes this season. He hasn’t had many before. He will get some award recognition. He hasn’t had much before.
He has 20 power-play points, that’s more than Nathan MacKinnon or McDavid, an especially high number considering the Leafs are 18th in the league with the man advantage — a unit that needs to improve.
Big picture, though, there is a lot to like about this edition of the Leafs, starting with general manager Brad Treliving, who is only in his second year on the job. That’s not a lot of time to get this much done.
But in just a season and a half, Treliving has made a coaching change and overhauled almost 40% of the roster. Berube is a fine coach. So was Sheldon Keefe, who was let go.
The difference: Berube coaches the game the way Treliving wants it played. Having a GM and coach in step can be a key to playoff success, even if it didn’t translate that way when Kyle Dubas and Keefe worked together here.
Treliving has made little secret of the fact that he didn’t like the Leafs defence much when he took over the club. But he hardly has sat still in that time.
He changed four of six regulars on defence — the big addition being the free-agent signing of Chris Tanev, who has paid off enormously in his first season with the Leafs. Tanev is one of those players you have watch every night and every shift to totally appreciate.
Tanev truly has changed the team. Which means Treliving has changed the team. Which means Berube has changed the team. And in partnership with the formally unpredictable Jake McCabe, Tanev and McCabe have formed one of the most defendable defence pairs in hockey.
The Leafs have a shutdown pair — which is something they didn’t have in the great years of Pat Quinn or Pat Burns.
The irony of this Leafs season: The better the Leafs have played defensively, the more limited their offence has been. Normally, one leads to the other in the NHL.
The Leafs have struggled to score in the first half of the season, partially because of their system change under Berube and partially because Matthews hasn’t been healthy enough.
But you can see all this forming into something special. A playoff lineup could look something like this:
Matthews centring Marner and the impressive Matthew Knies on the first line. John Tavares playing between Nylander and Max Pacioretty on a veteran second line.
The third line remains Treliving’s immediate challenge. He needs to acquire a centre of consequence to play between Max Domi and the emerging Bobby McMann.
That lineup would be deeper and stronger up front than anyone else in the East. Playing Berube’s style. Getting sound goaltending from Joseph Woll or Anthony Stolarz.
For the past six years, a team from the Atlantic Division has played for the Stanley Cup. Toronto has been on the outside looking in all that time.
This could be the year everything changes.
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