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Toronto Maple Leafs fans got a chance to look into the future Monday night.
General manager Brian Burke’s vision of what his hockey team will look like next season and beyond was on display.
There was the opening faceoff, with No. 1 draft pick Nazem Kadri making his NHL debut. There was rookie Tyler Bozak opening the scoring. There was Phil Kessel returning to sniper form with his sixth goal in five games. And everywhere there was the fuzzy-cheeked optimism of youth.
The game also was to mark the first appearance together in the NHL of Viktor Stalberg, called up Sunday, along with Bozak and Christian Hanson — dubbed the Frat Pack during an outstanding training camp. Only a game-time flu bug or food poisoning (nobody seemed sure which) kept Hanson out of uniform.
But all that did was prompt the callup of the highly touted Kadri as an emergency fill-in from the London Knights.
All together Monday night there were 17 players dressed in blue who were not Maple Leafs last season. Only two players, Tomas Kaberle and Alexei Ponikarovsky, have been Leafs for longer than two years. This is no longer the team that played like saboteurs so much of the season.
Some of the turnabout is due to veterans such as Francois Beauchemin and Jean-Sebastien Giguere but walking into the Leafs dressing room can make a guy believe he took a turn down the wrong hallway and just walked in on The Beav and his class. OK, that’s an exaggeration, but let’s just say around here shaving is a hobby, not a necessity. The only player who has seen 30 candles on the birthday cake is Giguere, although Ponikarovsky, Beauchemin and Rickard Wallin join the club this year.
That kind of inexperience can cause heartbreak, as in blowing leads in New Jersey. But it also brings enthusiasm and optimism — even if it is at times misplaced and doesn’t always translate into the win column. Sometimes it brings back-to-back shutouts on home ice. And sometimes it brings games like last night in which they outplayed the top team in the Western Conference for extended periods. It’s hard to imagine that happening even a few weeks ago. Kadri lined up for the opening faceoff against Joe Thornton. He lost that, but shortly after made a nifty pass off the boards to send Stalberg streaking through centre on a partial break.
Bozak opened the scoring converting a goalmouth pass from Kessel. Burke’s devotion to a youth movement was questioned when he gave up two first-round and a second-round pick for Kessel. But Kessel is only 22 himself, which makes him younger than Carl Gunnarsson, Nik Kulemin, Stalberg and even Bozak — all of whom are considered prospects. And, Kessel is already a proven NHL scorer. History is littered with No. 1 picks who never got to an NHL game without buying a ticket.
“They’ll all be regular NHL players. I have no doubt about that,” Wilson said of Stalberg, Bozak and Hanson. Still the transition this season has not been easy. Growing pains never are easy. When Burke took over on Nov. 29, 2008, the Leafs were on a five-game losing streak and had just three wins in 12 games. Last night they skated onto the ice having won three times in 11 games. But there is a difference. This is starting to have the feel of that team Burke foresaw, from Colton Orr’s belligerence to a blossoming offensive affair between Bozak and Kessel. Giguere has been the steadying influence a young team prone to mistakes needs in net. Fredrik Sjostrom improves the penalty kill and Dion Phaneuf’s tenacity has re-energized a crestfallen roster. All but Giguere are 27 years old or younger.
This is not yet a team that can be even a Stanley Cup pretender, but it has something that it didn’t have when Burke arrived, or even when 2010 arrived. The difference is that now this is a team with a future; a team that has hope where before there was none.
bill.lankhof@sunmedia.ca