Blue And White Beat: Leafs playing for positional pride
Fool me once, and you can’t fooled again.
Following the Leafs’ four-game winning streak to start the season, fans who immediately called the Air Canada Centre box office for Stanley Cup Final tickets showed about as much wisdom as former U.S. President George W. Bush did in remember old quotations (or reciting song lyrics from The Who, to date we’re still not sure which).
With the opening week of October all but a distant memory, the euphoria around similar success – such as the club’s recent trek out west – is much more reserved.
The Leafs were given a mulligan for having their four-game winning slide halted in Phoenix on Thursday after the players were running on fumes, having traveled across three time zones in as many American states.
However last night’s surprising flatline shootout defeat at Air Canada Centre, revived only by the heroics of Mikhail Grabovski less than 13 seconds before cardiac arrest set in, only reinforced the reality that this team is – at best – marginally better than last season.
There were two points to be taken at the hands of the Calgary Flames, the second-worst team in the Western Conference, who had played in Ottawa less than 24 hours before their matchup against Toronto. Instead, the home team had to scrap tooth-and-nail to salvage just one.
“We shouldn’t be tired at all,” offered Tyler Bozak when asked about fatigue being a possible factor in the Leafs slow start, evidenced by a paltry 12 shots on goal after two periods. “There’s no excuse. We have to come out harder.”
If the recent windfall of 11 points in the past six games has deluded any Leafs observer into believing that the club’s playoff drought will not extend to a sixth season, a closer look at the standings should provide an accurate perspective, if the on-ice abomination from Saturday didn’t.
Using a benchmark of 90 points to qualify for the post-season, Toronto would have to gain 49 points in 38 games – in other words, play 11 games above .500 – to be able to participate in playoff hockey.
The chances of the situation happening are about the same as last night’s game ever being aired on Leafs TV’s “Maple Leaf Classics”.
Yet the team is still very much embroiled in a standings race that general manager Brian Burke will be watching closely.
There’s still the matter of the first round pick in the June draft, the second of two first-rounders surrendered to the Boston Bruins in the much-debated trade for Phil Kessel.
With Burke having drawn much ire for acquiescing last year’s first round prize Tyler Seguin in the transaction, the contempt will only be compounded if Boston’s first pick in 2011 is in the top five.
The scenario must be an apparition in Burke’s worst nightmares: Bruins’ GM Peter Chiarelli approaching the podium in Minnesota this summer to announce the selection of any of the highly-touted top prospects, Sean Couturier, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, or Gabriel Landeskog.
If there’s any solace which can be found, it’s in the consensus that the 2011 draft isn’t expected to be very deep.
Discuss the merits of the Kessel trade at your own leisure. But there is no argument that the higher the Leafs finish – and thus the lower the Bruins draft – the more the negative impact to the Leafs is minimized, from their perspective of the deal.
It should be clear by now that the Leafs will be one of the 14 non-playoff teams that have a chance of winning the June draft lottery, with the caveat that their ticket is owned by Boston.
Currently Toronto sits in fifth-last place, which translates to the Bruins having an 8.1% chance of landing the first overall pick. The odds are miniscule but not impossible.
While the other two-thirds of the league are absorbed in the playoff races, Toronto will be preoccupied with simply ensuring that they finish out of the bottom five, so that even if their number comes up at the lottery, their counterparts in Beantown won’t inherit the first overall pick.
Leaf Nation can thank the hockey gods that the lottery winner can only move up a maximum of four places in the draft.
“It’s a big point for our team, but we’re not happy about not getting the two,” mused Dion Phaneuf after last night’s shootout loss.
Spoken like a captain in heat of a race.
Even if the challenge is not necessarily to make the playoffs, but just to finish as high as possible.
Rob Del Mundo is the author of Blue And White Beat, and is a regular columnist at TMLfans.ca
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