It was a little more than a decade ago that Randy Carlyle, in his days as Maple Leafs coach, ran practices that pushed two hours. Another generation before that, it wasn’t unheard of for an NHL coach to occasionally punish a naughty team with a three-hour skate.
On Friday, newly installed Leafs coach Craig Berube went to an opposite extreme: he ran a practice that lasted about 30 minutes, almost all of it devoted to game-pace work on special teams.
Berube acknowledged that, more than a week into a training camp that’s been heavy on hard skating and battle drills, with plenty of internal competition for roster spots, a lighter on-ice workday was in order.
“They’ve been going pretty hard here for eight, nine days, and so it was a good day to get 30, 35 minutes in on the power play and the penalty kill,†Berube said.
By his own admission, Reaves had an awful first half last year. He returned from injury as a
It’s no secret the Leafs can use that kind of work. The power play, a reliably formidable regular-season force, went a dismal 1-for-21 in another first-round playoff flame-out.
Perhaps even more alarming, the penalty kill ranked 23rd during the regular season before giving up six power-play goals in the seven-game series against the Boston Bruins.
As ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ general manager Brad Treliving said as camp opened: “We have to upgrade our penalty kill.â€
The new-in-town coaching staff can blame their predecessors for the mess that came before. If Berube is the ultimate overseer of all that happens in Leafland, this season’s power play is in the hands of assistant coach Marc Savard, while the penalty kill is the domain of associate coach Lane Lambert.
The good news is Lambert is a passionate, energetic figure who made his name as a player as a gritty penalty killer. The bad news is that when Lambert was fired in January as head coach of the New York Islanders, his team ranked 29th in penalty-killing rate — just behind the Leafs, 27th at the time. In Lambert’s defence, the Islanders penalty kill got even worse after he was replaced by Patrick Roy, finishing the season 32nd in the 32-team league.
Leafs club policy has muzzled assistant coaches, but Lambert has a reputation as an expressive character with a passion for the minutiae of man-short situations.
“Penalty killing is an art,†Lambert once told reporters in a previous gig. “It takes a special type of person to be a penalty-killer and to commit to it because you know that it’s going to require sacrifice, and sometimes sacrifice requires pain.â€
If ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½â€™s primary power-play personnel will surely be tweaked — with a prominent role no doubt occupied by new defenceman Chris Tanev, one of the league’s penalty-kill staples over the past decade — three games into the pre-season the Leafs have cycled through a variety of options on the penalty kill.
“We’re all new here,†Berube said. “We want to see what guys can do here in those situations and how they react to certain things — their stick details and their mind, how they think. So we’ve got to give them opportunities.â€
Penalty-kill regular Mitch Marner said Lambert’s vision of the unit is getting positive reviews among the players.
“I think the thing that we like: it’s a pressure kill,†Marner said. “I think we’ve got a lot of guys on our team that can move their feet very well and can read plays very well. So I think for us, it’s trying to make (opponents) uncomfortable on the power play, and that’s what we’re trying to do this year. And so far it’s been fun just to learn the new kind of process.â€
The Leafs on the ice for Wednesday’s practice, the Swedes especially, were pleasantly surprised
With that said, this is the NHL, where there’s nothing much new under the sun.
“We’ve kind of done this PK before,†Marner acknowledged in the next breath. “So I think guys will pick it up fairly quickly.â€
So quickly, apparently, that a half-hour practice will suffice.
“(The defencemen) have got to be staying home, doing a good job around our net, have good sticks. But it’s more about the pressure, not letting teams have too much time with the puck,†Berube said. “And so it’s a work in progress. We’ve got to keep banging away on it.â€
Leafs notes
William Nylander left Thursday’s game after hitting his head in an awkward fall, thanks in part to a stick push in the rear end from teammate Nick Robertson. On Friday, Nylander practised and pronounced himself in good health, and said Robertson called him after the game to offer an apology for the well-intentioned, if ill-timed, push. “I just wasn’t ready for it because I didn’t feel like it was needed in that way,†Nylander said, adding that soft ice at Scotiabank Arena contributed to what he called a “toe pick.â€
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