Unbe-Leaf-able!

Yup, it's time for one of those intermittent hockey posts that look so incongruous next to all the political and economic patter.

Please forgive the enthusiasm, especially so early in the season. But you have to understand, the Leafs have played eleven games. If you had listened to the majority of puck pundits at the season's outset, you'd have expected them to lose, oh, twenty of those eleven games, well en route to finishing dead last, fined for being a grievous embarrassment to the National Hockey League, and being relegated all the way down to Bantam A.

Instead, they're 5-3-3. Still a fairly modest record, I'll be the first to admit, but it's not the win total that has me so excited. It's how they're playing: in a word, hungry.

The Leafs were many things since the lockout, but hungry wasn't one of them. Why would it be? The adoration of Leaf Nation is a foregone conclusion whether you win the puck battles or not. Complacency had set in like dry rot and was eating the heart and soul out of the team. There was little to no accountability on the bench, particularly for veterans: play a bad shift and who cares, you'll be right back out there soon. That inevitably led to a succession of bad shifts and lost games.

Ron Wilson and Cliff Fletcher have changed all that with the speed of a slapper from the point. It's not so much the record that shows it--the team's record was actually fairly similar at this point last year--it's the fact that of those eleven games, they didn't bother playing for all of one of them. Every other game has been fiercely contested. The Leafs could easily be 9-2 right now.

This isn't the most talented group of forwards to take to the ice in the NHL this season: far from it, in fact. But they're a lunchbucket crew: they'll outwork you. All the hockey cliches apply: to beat the Leafs you have to give 110%, put in a full 60 minutes, blah, blah, blah. 

Courtesy Cliff Fletcher, the Leafs now have the speed to compete with most of the teams in the league. Courtesy Wilson, they have (a) a system and (b) the ironclad knowledge that a benching awaits if they're too lazy to use the speed and too dense to adhere to the system. The combination is yielding points in the standings, not to mention scads of exciting hockey.  Just look at the last two wins: they pumped six goals past arguably the best 'tender in history, Martin Brodeur, firing more shots (48) than he'd ever seen in a game over his entire career. They followed that up with a convincing comeback against currently the league's best team, the New York Rangers. Down 2-0 and down a man at the 12:00 mark of the third period, they killed the penalty and then proceeded to score five goals in a span of 5:21...past a goalie that had shut them out for five consecutive periods.

Unbe-Leaf-able.

I don't mean to single any one player out, because all of them have had an impact on this team. But credit really does have to go to John Mitchell and Dominic Moore. Their hustle exemplifies the new Leaf attitude, and it's a welcome change for the team's legions of long-suffering fans. 

There are many who feel the Leafs should be losing as many games as possible in order to gain a high draft pick. Bollocks. No team's going to go out and intentionally lose games, and this year's edition is living proof that coaching can make a difference. It's entirely possible the Maple Leafs will finish well ahead of where they did last year. Perhaps in the playoffs. And believe you me, this team is well-primed to advance in the playoffs...where effort and will really pays off.