TORONTO-the first day of an NHL training camp is reserved for promotional photos and meditations. It also comes with an excessive amount of media attention, even in this era of remote zoom availability, so if you work for a team like the Toronto Maple Leafs, it’s important not to say anything you might contrition after.
For general manager Kyle Dubas, it was a good afternoon behind the microphone.
“A big hypothetical,” Dubas said Sunday, when asked if this can be considered a successful season for his leaves without any form of playoff success.
The three-year-old GM was in good spirits during a 20-minute session with reporters. He certainly wasn’t evasive or sneaky when he posed some variations on how to measure success in 2021. He simply refused to say words about what we all know intuitively about this iteration of his team.
The Leafs intend to conquer the North, first in the regular season and after in the Division playoffs. They present themselves as legitimate players for the Stanley Cup and know they haven’t won a playoff series since, before Nicholas Robertson rode the skates for the first time.
That’s why Dubas ‘ less-is-more approach was wise.
We’ll tell all the same, so why turn on even more on the stack, as the game is beaten?
The Closer Dubas came to revealing specific expectations that the team had finished no better than a draw for sixth overall in the NHL in recent years. He talked about how former division foes in Tampa and Boston have always been big regular-season teams before playing long walks in the playoffs.
He didn’t explicitly tie every point, but it certainly looked like he was going to set the bar: dominate the regular season, secure home advantage and the long-awaited next step will follow.
“A lot of people will point to our playoff failures as a source of dissatisfaction and concern going into the year, but as I explained to the players [Saturday]-and [coach] Sheldon [Keefe] and I really talked about the end of the season-the main thing we feel has influenced the way we’ve gone through the season is that we haven’t positioned ourselves as well as we can for the playoffs,” Dubas said. “When we came back to ’16-‘ 17 last year, we had runs that hampered our ability to position ourselves as hard as we could in the playoffs. What we focus on on the first day of camp is building the bases that will serve us through the regular season and then focusing on each day of the regular season to prepare as best we can for the playoffs.”
Signs of growth, he suggested, can be measured by how quickly you shake off a bad game crisis. Being only good is not considered good enough.
The Leafs are favored to win the northern division, both by bookmakers and advanced statistical models, and this unique realignment of covid-19 guarantees the last Canadian team in the conference finals.
In that sense, it seems like a golden opportunity after sharing a division with the Lightning and Bruins teams that have won the first and third most games in the last four regular seasons, respectively.
But it’s Sports and models don’t always hold true.
Not all free agent signings match as expected, including TJ Brodie and Joe Thornton in Toronto, Jacob Markstrom and Christopher Tanev in Calgary, and Tyler Toffoli and Corey Perry in Montreal.
In addition, the gap between the Leafs and other Canadian teams was not obvious when the season was interrupted last March. Edmonton actually enjoyed a slightly better profit percentage at that time.585-.579 -, while Vancouver (.565), Calgary (.564) and Winnipeg (.563) closely followed.
Then Montreal hit Pittsburgh in the bubble back to the summer game and had a busy offseason. Even Ottawa, auch-rans the past two years, have reason to hope with a nascent group of prospects and a few veterans who have been brought in to calm the water around them.
“As difficult as I think the circumstances and the world we live in right now — playing without fans and the difficult times that a lot of people are going through — I think it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for something that can really be special,” Leafs captain John Tavares said.
“I think the Canadian Division is probably the most exciting, only because of all the fans and the pride that comes with the game in every city on every team,” added Auston Matthews. “It should be for a good hockey.”