Anthony Petrielli joined Sportsnet Today to discuss the start of preseason, John Tavares’ fast start, the Leafs special teams, and the decision at the backup goaltender position.
On potentially using John Tavares and Mitch Marner on the penalty kill:
I think the way that they’ll try to position it is that they’ll go towards the end of a penalty; they’ll go on for the final 30 seconds or so to see if they can finish it off and quickly transition into the offensive zone.
Penalties can be such a momentum swing in a game. Within the game itself, a team gets a power play and even if they don’t score, you can see the tilt the ice down either way… I think Babcock is trying to flip the ice.
The injuries are always the big concern. Otherwise, John Tavares did it last year on the Islanders. He was a regular penalty killer for them. We’ve seen a few times Marner go out there and he is carrying the puck through the neutral zone and doing laps with the puck skating around. They will be effective at it.
I think they’re still trying to figure out who will be a penalty killer on this team with guys like Komarov now off. They are trying to sort it out. Assuming Kapanen will be one penalty killer, they also tried Andreas Johnsson last year, so he probably has a crack at it.
They brought in Par Lindholm. They are not going to have a fourth-line center who doesn’t kill penalties, so he is going to have to show that he can kill penalties. I thought he had a pretty good debut. He is definitely no Petri Kontiola, so that is a nice thing. I think they are just trying to sort out who is going to do what.
I am surprised they’ve never really given thought to Kadri on the penalty kill just because of his role as a de-facto shutdown center, but they never seem to really talk about him as a penalty killer in any capacity.
On Tavares playing net front and the Leafs loading up their top power-play unit:
Tavares used to be a really good lacrosse player. His hand-eye coordination is awesome. He didn’t play in front of the net with the Islanders because who else would control the puck on that team on the halfwall in comparison to him? But he’s definitely good at that role.
He is a strong stick guy. His game growing up — the knock on him was always skating. Seeing him through his junior days and all of that, the statement on Tavares was always that once he gets the puck below the top of the circle, he is amazing. It is just, “Can he skate there? Can he do it off the rush?” He’s cleaned up that part of his game, so kudos to him.
I think that’s the ideal scenario, is him in front of the net. It was just whether he was going to do it.
Last year, I don’t want to say the Leafs got into trouble with their power play because their power play was really good with that Marner unit and JVR in front, but there were some issues there with Matthews on the second unit and not really getting power play time. By the time playoffs roll around, all of a sudden we are hearing about tension between Babcock and Matthews.
How can you blame Babcock for putting that other unit out instead of Matthews? But I think there is a bit of an ego balancing act here where it’s, “Okay, I’m going to try to make sure everyone plays nice in the sandbox and gets their touches,” basically.
On the decision at the backup goaltending position:
The one thing to note here, and this will be the hardest thing to gauge, is that we’ve seen Sparks carry a heavy workload in the AHL but we haven’t seen him play once every three weeks in the second half of a back-to-back. Curtis McElhinney we know can be that vet who just goes in every so often and plays well. He has been good now for a few years. He hasn’t always been the greatest goalie, as his career will show, but the last few years, he’s been good.
I don’t think Babcock will be quick to sit on any goalie coming in, as we saw with Jhonas Enroth — pretty good goalie, but his role as a backup was, “You’re coming in in the second half of a back-to-back and you better be good.” He struggled.
That’s a tough thing for them to gauge. I feel like Babcock will lean towards the vet on that. He knows what McElhinney can do in that role and he knows he has the temperament for it, whereas Sparks is just used to being a starter at this point.
That is not a knock on him — it’s a good thing — but for the Leafs purposes, they are still going to give Andersen his 60 games. I can’t imagine lower than 55. Can Sparks, or Pickard for that matter, handle that pure backup role? It is not a 1A/1B situation. It is, “When is Andersen tired? When is their back to back?” And that’s it.
On whether they should be seeing what they have in Garret Sparks:
They are definitely in a position to see. But they really believe — we heard it a lot last year, and this is a Leafs opinion, not an Anthony opinion — that Andersen plays better when he plays more. We heard that a lot from them. They want him to have a sizeable workload in net. I don’t think they are just going to start pulling a Gregg Popovich in the NBA and sitting him for no reason because it’s a Tuesday and they flew on a plane the night before. That does not seem to be — and maybe it should be — in their DNA of decision making right now with Andersen.
I think they really kind of let Andersen guide their thought making process and dictate it a little bit in terms of how many games he is starting and when he is starting. If he can play, he is going to play. It’s kind of a weird complex there. They would have to shake that belief a little bit and be a little bit more open to playing their backup in that scenario.
Otherwise, Sparks doesn’t really have anything to prove in the A at this point. But it’s weird. If you look around the league, how many teams would actively trade an asset for Sparks right now?
