It was only a matter of time until someone became frustrated enough to speak up. This has been happening for too long now.
As we’re all aware by now, Anthony Stolarz was pointed in his comments about his team after Mason Marchment ran into him in the crease on Saturday night.
Stolarz: I mean, I am not happy. Guys are going to run me. I am going to try to stand up for myself. I heard the ref say we got a power play, and there really isn’t much I can do to him on the ground.
Kudos to the guys who were there and got down with him, but like I said, we have to start going to the cage a little harder and make it harder for their goalies.
It’s not fun. I don’t like having 225-pound guys landing on me. Hopefully, we learn our lesson here.
… Maybe we can take a page out of their book and start getting to the net. For us, we like to go low-to-high and shoot, but for their goalie, it is like playing catch in the yard. He is seeing everything, and we are not making it difficult.
We made it difficult in the third, and look what happened. We came out, tied it, got a point out of it, and almost scored with five seconds left. It is too little, too late. Even though we are six games into the season, enough is enough. We have to start picking it up here.
You could overlook a one-off, but this is a continuation of a trend from last season.
Stolarz’s season came to an end last playoffs due to a knock to the head from Sam Bennett. Nobody in blue and white even inconvenienced Bennett the rest of the series, let alone meaningfully went after or straight up challenged him. At the time, I thought Stolarz taking a puck to the face from a Sam Reinhart shot may have been a factor (and in part justify the lack of response), but when the series was over, Stolarz made it clear it was, in fact, the contact to the head from Bennett. He left no ambiguity, which was kind of telling.
You can argue it was the playoffs and it wasn’t the right time, but if it was Sergei Bobrovsky taking the hit, do you think Florida would play out the string from there? After Brandon Hagel smoked Aleksander Barkov last spring, Aaron Ekblad took a suspension to exact retribution.
Stolarz lived inside that kind of a culture on the other side, collecting a Cup ring with Florida, so it’s of no surprise that he might have a different view than what is seemingly the prevailing approach in Toronto.
Considering how last season ended, and now compounding matters with the continued absence of Joseph Woll, you’d think the Leafs would be more sensitive than ever when it came to contact with their goalie. It just hasn’t been the case, though.
It started in preseason when Laurent Dauphin, who hasn’t played in the NHL in a few years, charged hard at Stolarz in preseason. There was no response. In a sequence in Detroit, there was a flurry in Stolarz’s crease in which Stolarz thought he had the puck covered, but the Wings players dug until the puck came free to continue the offensive zone possession. Stolarz was visibly upset by it and spoke to the ref about it during a stoppage in play. Again, opponents were crashing the Toronto net hard without consequence.
For Stolarz individually, it culminated in what happened against Seattle and his comments afterward, but in between, there have been other incidents where teams have taken liberties. We saw the “cheap shot” — in the words of Auston Matthews, who was on the ice at the time — the youngest Leaf, Easton Cowan, took against Nashville without a proper response. It wouldn’t be surprising if Cowan felt similar feelings to Stolarz, but a 20-year-old with four games in the league isn’t in a place to voice it publicly.
Clearly, this isn’t an isolated incident that caught Stolarz on a bad day; it’s a consistent pattern of events that would inevitably boil over in some capacity.
It’s disappointing on several levels, not least of which is that the organization tried pushing a “DNA change” throughout the summer and into training camp. It was only a month ago that Craig Berube, sitting beside Brad Treliving at the podium, opened camp with the statement, “I know Tre talked about DNA last year. I thought Tre did a hell of a job changing it over the summer, adding new players.”
What’s changed? So far, they are less talented up front and continue to stand around while their players are physically pushed. They are generally attempting to play the same way they did last season, minus one less star player upfront. The only part of their game that looks markedly different to date is the penalty kill (courtesy of their one new assistant coach, Derek Lalonde).
The good news is that we’re only six games into the season. There is plenty of time for things to change, iron out, and evolve. But how will they proceed from here? Will they overcorrect? Will they continue as they are? Will any Leaf show a heartbeat at any point, or is that only reserved for the goalie, of all people?
Ideally, you’d like to see the Leafs not just react appropriately, but actually initiate physically. It’s not like they lack players capable of mixing it up or taking a run at an opponent. Jake McCabe and Simon Benoit can lower the boom. Max Domi has taken real runs at players, at times. Dakota Joshua can throw his body around. Matthew Knies presumably put on weight this summer in part to throw it around(?).
As we wrote about last week, what is the advantage of the Leafs‘ status as the “heaviest” in the league (statistically)? If Leafs brass are building toward this goal, the team on the ice has use it to their advantage and lean on opponents, imposing a physical toll and wearing the opposition down. The Leafs aren’t even close to achieving this goal, and truthfully, seeing is believing on this ever changing at this point.
A player always has to pick and choose his spots carefully when speaking out in this market, but to me, it’s commendable that Stolarz finally spoke some truth to a situation that has been blatantly obviously for quite some time (it was flagged all of last week after the Cowan ‘incidents,’ and we discussed it at length last week on the podcast). However, of all the players you want to see fired up enough to call it out, the goalie is probably the last guy on the list.
Some will argue this is a side show; that none of it ultimately matters, as it’s all extracurricular nonsense with no real impact on wins and losses. I don’t buy the argument. Their starting goalie was clearly pissed off and already tired of it. That alone is cause for concern.
Stolarz came from a Florida team — the team the East runs through — that would never stand for this. They’ve taken multiple liberties with the Leafs over the years and have a laundry list of players they’ve injured and/or punked. They are the current masters of shithousery, to be fair — it’s not only the Leafs that have suffered at the hands of the Panthers — but there’s no path in which you turn the other cheek and beat them in a playoff series. It’s not going to happen. You need to be able to match fire with some level of fire, and a togetherness/pack mentality is required to stand up to them. They will toy with you if you don’t. It is blood in the water for the Panthers if they think they can break their opponent physically and mentally.
For a team that fancies itself a contender capable of a playoff run, the Leafs have to sort this out. Stolarz is frustrated because he already knows.
Moving forward, it’s not about waiting until the next thing happens to see how they respond. It should be about actually initiating and imposing their will on opponents to begin with. If the going-through-the-motions continues, this should go above the players. It’s on the coaches and management to start making moves and removing players who aren’t playing to the appropriate standards. Right now, it doesn’t look like there are any standards for how the Leafs conduct their business.
It’s early days yet, and it can feel a little harsh to be asking these deeper questions during October hockey. But this runs far deeper than the first few weeks of the season or a few isolated incidents. It is a continuation of a years-long theme, and it is too soft from the entire organization, starting at the top through to the expectations the coaching staff is supposed to set and what the players ultimately deliver on the ice. The time for the talk of changing needs to be over, and it should have been over years ago. It’s now about actions, from everyone involved.
Otherwise, we’re just spinning our tires at this point.
