COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Maple Leafs are so far ahead of schedule, club president Brandan Shanahan has just unveiled plans for the 20th anniversary celebration of the Dynasty Team that won the first of four straight Stanley Cups in 2017.
Getting ahead of ourselves? Well, yes, but youth must be served and the quicker the better, for the example being set by Toronto is that structure and a winning environment can never be installed and instilled too soon.
Otherwise you become the Oilers of recent yore and the Avalanche of today, organizations that collected a passel of extremely skilled high draft picks that suffered and stalled while playing in a losing culture.
If Edmonton’s Connor McDavid hadn’t come the year before, you would say Toronto’s Auston Matthews is a once-in-a-generation talent. And actually, he is, even if there are people in the industry who would be tempted to take Mitch Marner first off of the Toronto roster in a dispersal draft. Then, of course, there are Morgan Rielly, William Nylander and a passel of whippersnappers behind them.
But talent alone, young or old, is not enough. Again: see Edmonton and Colorado, where elite young talent developed bad habits and perhaps bad attitudes borne by losing. The structure and discipline demanded by — and the culture and environment instilled by — Shanahan, general manager Lou Lamoriello and Mike Babcock behind the bench have been paramount in this ahead-of-schedule revival in Toronto.
The Rangers’ 54-year Stanley Cup drought from 1940-94 is the longest in NHL history. The Maple Leafs are going on 50 years this spring, though they only are working on 49 seasons, given the 2004-05 cancellation. The Blackhawks had a 49-year and 48-season drought from 1961 to 2010. The Blues have been Cup-less for 48 years and 47 seasons since joining the league in 1967-68 … when the Leafs were last defending champions.
So 50 years later ahead of schedule? Within context, of course. The Maple Leafs awakened in playoff position Saturday morning even if this is not a playoffs-or-bust season. But earning a tournament spot is within reason. Great things are within reason when young talent is nurtured in a structured, winning environment.
The instant classic U.S. shootout victory over Canada in the world junior gold-medal game featured passion that is missing from the NHL season that simply is too long, too packed in, and features way too many monotonous games which are all but devoid of scoring chances and hitting, let alone actual goals.
Fighting had to and has to go. It is simply too unsafe for the athletes. But nothing has replaced the emotion in buildings and on the benches that accompanied brawling. Hitting is on the way out. Nothing has replaced the juice of a big hit. It’s blue-line-to-blue-line, send it in, get it out, quick change, minute by minute, game after game.
It is indisputable that the players are better than ever, but the games are not. They’re just not. The NHL pretends every game is critical in the standings that are artificially close because of the loser’s point, but if every single game is critical, then none assumes particular importance.
The move to diminish the number of divisional games so that every team visits every arena at least once each season — abetted by the NHL Players’ Association — has played a major role in reducing passion historically stoked by rivalries. It is ridiculous. The Islanders’ two games at the Garden — Two! Or, one more than Arizona — are separated by more than five months.
Yes, the kids were great to watch in a game filled with energy, emotion and passion. You should have enjoyed it while you could.
The havoc created by the bye week, the brainchild of the NHLPA so that players in the All-Star Game wouldn’t be denied the same vacation period as the other 660 athletes, has subtracted from the competitive integrity of a schedule that is packed with five-games-in-eight-nights stretches for tired and ragged teams.
The Islanders in general have no one but themselves to blame for their miserable plight, but what about the NHL sending them to Colorado to play their first game in altitude on Friday coming out of their bye week?
The club had an 11:30 a.m. charter flight from New York available to the team, but a majority of players flew on their own into Denver, where everyone gathered for a 4 p.m. (MST) practice. The Avalanche, meanwhile, were in a regular flow (come to think of it, that’s not such a good thing) and won Friday’s game in a 2-1 shootout.
Then there are the Red Wings, who will play three games in three days from March 26-28, home against Minnesota preceding back-to-back matches at Carolina because there was no better opportunity to make up the previously canceled Dec. 19 game in Raleigh, N.C.
But the league is concerned about the condensed schedule and its impact on the quality of play and integrity of competition.
Of course it is.
Finally, I worked for John McMullen, with Peter McMullen, while Cathy McMullen was once upon a time my intern, and the pleasure was all mine.
There would not be a NHL franchise in New Jersey if not for John McMullen, the club’s original owner (and he was an original, all right), who on Friday appropriately became the first inductee into the Devils Ring of Honor.
He was irascible, said what was on his mind — It was McMullen’s “Who cares about the small markets?” comment at an owners’ press conference during the 1994-95 lockout that all but put an end to such availabilities for all time — and he battled into eternity with his NJSEA landlords who had stuck him and the team with the worst lease imaginable through annual rounds of renegotiation and threats to skedaddle to Hamilton, Ontario, or Nashville.
But he was a great owner, dedicated to his team, to his players, to his organization and to his home state. He was a family man who created a family of excellence at the Meadowlands right off 16W, the Exit of Champions and the honor was for those who worked and played for him.