Steve SImmons

Advertisement 1 Share this Story : SIMMONS: How great are the Maple Leafs? You'll know by November 1 SIMMONS: How great are the Maple Leafs? You'll know by November 1 Author of the article: Article content The great difficulty for the Toronto Maple Leafs, year after too many years, hasn't just been about how each season ended, but also about how each season began. This ever-changing version of the club — the one that starts with captain Auston Matthews , the pending free agent, Mitch Marner, and the television star, William Nylander — has never had a signature start to a new season. The Leafs of Matthews, Marner and Nylander have never been in first place in the Atlantic Division of the National Hockey League on November 1. Most years, they haven't been close. This is Season 9 for the kids who aren't kids anymore. They have had their share of great personal numbers, end-of-season scoring totals, and rather rich paycheques, but what they have yet to master is a runaway start to the regular season. That's what new head coach Craig Berube is asking for. He wants to see the Leafs come out sprinting from the starting blocks instead of their usual early season jog. Last year, the Leafs were six points behind Boston after a partial first month, sitting in fifth place in the division. The year before that, they were eight points behind the Bruins, in seventh place in the NHL's strongest division. In other years, they have been eighth, sixth, fifth, fourth and once they were in second, five points behind Tampa Bay. Why does the first month matter? Because the team that led the Atlantic Division on November 1st in every season but last year wound up in first place at the end of the season. A brisk start matters to a hockey club looking to demonstrate a new side of itself in the early season under a general manager in his second season on the job and a coach working with the Leafs for the first time. The four most important factors: THE TRELIVING FACTOR GM Brad Treliving doesn't just like size, he loves it. Since coming to Toronto, he has added a 6-foot-6 goaltender in Anthony Stolarz, a 6-foot-5 defenceman in Phillippe Myers, two 6-foot-4 competitors in Simon Benoit and Steven Lorentz, three 6-foot-2 difference makers in Chris Tanev, Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Max Pacioretty. There is no half court championship in the NHL but if there was, the Leafs would probably lead in rebounding. Without a whole lot of cap flexibility, Treliving has altered his roster by 40 percent in one calendar year. Eight of 20 players who dressed on opening night last year are no longer with the team. This isn't exactly his team, yet. But it's a lot closer to his vision than the team he started with a year ago. THE BERUBE FACTOR Depending on who you talk to, Craig Berube is either a good, an average, or a great NHL coach. There is no consensus on all he brings to the club. What there is consensus about: He will be demanding and fair and at times brutally honest with his players. The Maple Leafs have been spoiled in the past. No one wanted to ruffle any feathers. Berube played only one way in his career, maximizing his toughness and below-average talent to fight his way through 17 seasons. He doesn't expect his players, Ryan Reaves aside, to fight. But he expects them to want to fight for loose pucks, fight for inside position around the net, fight to stay on your line of choice. Berube has a first line in Matthews, Marner, and Matthew Knies that seems set, and a fourth line of David Kampf centring Reaves and Steven Lorentz to do some dirty work. The middle lines are a work in progress, although Nylander's immense skill puts him in the rare position to have high-end talent and play on a second line. THE TANEV FACTOR Chris Tanev was the signing of the off-season that mattered the most. Not since Jake Muzzin was healthy have the Leafs had a defenceman anywhere close to what Tanev will bring to the club. And Muzzin's game wasn't as primarily defensive-based as Tanev's happens to be. Assuming he stays healthy — which is an assumption open to discussion, considering Tanev's history — he will bring the kind of quiet intelligence to the blueline the Leafs haven't had since the days of Dmitri Yushkevich and Sylvain Lefebvre. When he got to a very good team in Dallas last year at the trade deadline, the impressive Stars grew more impressive. They won 15 of their final 19 games with Tanev in the lineup and went on to play 19 playoff games. The Leafs played seven playoff games last year, only more than seven in one of the past eight seasons. Tanev should free up the highly skilled Morgan Rielly from some defensive responsibilities while adding to the Leafs penalty kill. Those who appreciate play without the puck will quickly become advocates of Tanev's quiet and noisy game. THE GOALIE SHUFFLE Ilya Samsonov was the starting goaltender for the Maple Leafs on opening night last season, but the betting here is you don't remember that Kevin Petruzzelli was the backup. Now it's start over time with the injury-prone Joseph Woll starting the season and the statistically excellent Stolarz as his backup, and with depth behind those two with Matt Murray taking the role Martin Jones carried a year ago. Woll, if healthy, should be an upgrade on Samsonov, who almost lost his career last season. Stolarz proved to be the perfect backup with the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers. And Murray, after three seasons fighting injuries, is apparently healthy, happy and ready to resume being a goaltender of some quality. This is a roster that could or should challenge for first place in the Atlantic. But you'll know that in the next few weeks. If they're not in or around first place in the division by the beginning of November, the odds of finishing that high, which would buy them some playoff freedom, will be significantly diminished. [email protected] x.com/simmonssteve SIMMONS: How great are the Maple Leafs? You'll know by November 1 Back to video Advertisement 2 Article content Article content Share this article in your social network Share this Story : SIMMONS: How great are the Maple Leafs? You'll know by November 1 Comments Join the Conversation Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. 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Leafs goalie Joseph Woll has never started a game there. Opening night in the NHL is better in Montreal than any place else.

Joseph Woll is day to day, week to week, and who knows, maybe this is how it will be for the rest of his entire playing career.

Advertisement 1 Share this Story : SIMMONS: How do you trust Woll now? Maple Leafs apparently can't SIMMONS: How do you trust Woll now? Maple Leafs apparently can't Author of the article: Article content Joseph Woll is day to day, week to week, and who knows, maybe this is how it will be for the rest of his entire playing career. You really have to wonder. You really have to doubt what the Maple Leafs have in their supposed No. 1 goalie. A starting goalie has to be ready. A starting goalie has to be prepared. A starting goalie has to be trusted and believed in. And what are we supposed to think — and more importantly, what are the Maple Leafs themselves supposed to think — when Woll was scheduled to start in the season-opening game Wednesday night in Montreal and pulled himself before being placed on the injured list on the first day of the new season? If this was something, something that had never happened before, it would be rather easy to give Woll the benefit of the doubt. But this is five professional seasons of missing more games than he played. The last game he was supposed to start — Game 7 in Boston, a big one, a huge one against the Bruins — he mysteriously pulled himself on the day of the game. And on Tuesday after practice, he was talking excitedly about making his first start at the famed Bell Centre. That was in the afternoon. By the following morning, he was on the injured list and the season-opening start went to expected backup Anthony Stolarz, the giant the Leafs signed from the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers. Advertisement 2 Article content SIMMONS: How do you trust Woll now? Maple Leafs apparently can't Back to video The Game 7 flip-flop against the Bruins was shrouded in mystery. The lower-body injury that prevented Woll from dressing and starting in Montreal wasn't exactly expected. Head coach Craig Berube had an early season plan for his netminders. Every coach maps that out. Woll was going to start in Montreal. Stolarz was going to start on Thursday night in his native New Jersey. Woll would start the home opener against Pittsburgh on Saturday night. Now this is a terrific early season opportunity for Stolarz, who was rather sharp in the Montreal opener, and now for the first real time in his decade-long career he has a chance to earn the trust of his coaching staff and a chance to possibly steal the No. 1 position in the Leafs net, which no one really saw coming. On the day before the opener, Berube was asked about Woll's history of injury, about the problem he has had in the past and he played the “I'm the first-year coach” card. He wasn't about to judge Woll from the start of this season, counting training camp. He was going to learn about him on his own. General manager Brad Treliving has been asked about his goalie many times since last season ended. Is Woll injury prone? Is he the kind of goalie who can't play when he's a little banged up? How can he be trusted to be the Leafs' No. 1 goalie when he's only averaged 24 games a season in his first five professional years? Treliving happens to be a big Woll fan. He thinks he should be a terrific goaltender. He thinks he can be a factor in the NHL. He thinks that Woll trains so hard, works so hard, is so professional about his approach to playing that he can't help but succeed. He says all of that knowing all of the history that says otherwise. But the evidence is overwhelmingly just fine game in against Woll, one missed start into the new season. If this is happening now, this is happening already, what's next? RECOMMENDED VIDEO Advertisement 3 Article content There is a relationship that needs to exist between goaltenders and the teams they play on for everyone to succeed. The goalies have to be trusted by their teammates. They have to be dependable and available. That's just how the players view things. They also have to be trusted by their coaches and just as importantly, trusted by management. If the players lose faith in the goalie, if the coaching staff loses faith, if management doesn't trust the goalie, what you are left with are the Ottawa Senators of the past several seasons. After Matt Murray signed long term in Ottawa, long after he won his Stanley Cups in Pittsburgh, the trust broke down between the goalie and the team. His exit was explained this way: The players didn't believe in Murray. The coaches didn't believe in him. Neither did management. In the end, they paid for him to go away. The key breakdown, of course, was trust: They didn't know when Murray would be able to play, be ready to play, be well enough to play. The Leafs now have Murray playing for the Marlies and he is a relatively decent insurance policy of sorts if they need him. And they have another giant, Dennis Hildeby, to probably play in New Jersey as they wait to see what happens next with Woll. This is not how any team wants to start a new season, with these kind of questions in goal. With a undetermined matter this large and significant. Especially when the schedule provides you with three games against non-playoff teams to start. Maybe Woll will get healthy and will return and will be fine in the Leafs net. Maybe. Very early in his NHL career, maybe seems to be Woll's new middle name. X @simmonssteve Article content Share this article in your social network Share this Story : SIMMONS: How do you trust Woll now? Maple Leafs apparently can't Comments Join the Conversation Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information. 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Get the latest from Steve Simmons straight to your inbox Stuart Skinner was playing goal for the South Side Athletic Club in Edmonton when he first became consumed with a goaltender named Carey Price.

There are a lot of similarities between the philosophies of the Leafs great and the current bench boss

Advertisement 1 Share this Story : SIMMONS: Is Maple Leafs coach Craig Berube the new Pat Burns in Toronto? SIMMONS: Is Maple Leafs coach Craig Berube the new Pat Burns in Toronto? There are a lot of similarities between the philosophies of the Leafs great and the current bench boss Author of the article: Article content Craig Berube doesn't look a whole lot like Pat Burns, doesn't sound a whole lot like Pat Burns, but when you break down what he believes in as a coach, his sensibilities sure feel a lot like the departed Burns. Advertisement 2 Article content SIMMONS: Is Maple Leafs coach Craig Berube the new Pat Burns in Toronto? Back to video Burns was, for those who remember, the most bombastic and successful Maple Leafs coach of the post-expansion era. He wasn't smooth the way Pat Quinn was smooth and quick with his words. He wasn't completely accomplished before he got here, the way Mike Babcock was accomplished when he got here, and he wasn't full of himself or full of anything else, the way Babcock was in his time with the Leafs. Berube is a coach of few words publicly. He provides as many as he has to under the circumstances. He's still figuring out Toronto and Toronto still is figuring him out. But the more he speaks, the more he moves players around, the more he rolls his eyes — one of his favourite things to do in his daily news gatherings — the more reminiscent he seems of Burns, a coach he once hoped to play for. Advertisement 3 Article content Burns was a semi-nobody coaching Sherbrooke of the American League, the Montreal Canadiens farm team, when Berube was a semi-nobody trying to make an impression with the Hershey Bears of the very same league. The same year Burns landed in Montreal, Berube wound up patrolling the wing for the Philadelphia Flyers. One ex-cop keeping an eye out, one playing a cop for the Flyers. “Pat was one of my favourites,” Berube said. “I always wanted to play for him and never got the opportunity. I said that to him. “I told him I'd like to play for you at some point in time. Never had the chance, unfortunately.” Now their names are linked on the all-time list of Maple Leafs coaches. They may be different coaches and this certainty is a different time, but if you make a list of what mattered most to Burns, what he demanded on a daily basis from his players, how his vision of team included every single player, how he wanted to control play on the boards and away from them, it sounds like what matters now to Berube. Advertisement 4 Article content “He was a man's man,” Berube said of Burns. “My type of coach. He was a straight shooter. Tells you like it is. And personable at the same time, approachable at the same time. He's the type of guy you want to sit down and have a conversation with.” And maybe a beer. Almost certainly a beer. Doug Gilmour, now a Leafs season-ticket holder, played for 14 different coaches — more if you count the interim fill-ins — in his Hall of Fame career. The best he ever played was for Burns in those memorable Toronto seasons. The best coach he played for, in his words, Jacques Lemaire. The best motivator, Jacques Demers. The Maple Leafs of 1992-93 were much different than Berube's current team. They weren't expected to be a playoff team, let alone a contender. They weren't expected to come within a win of the Stanley Cup final. Advertisement 5 Article content But they were similar in one area: On defence. Those Leafs teams had a workmanlike defence of Dave Ellett, Sylvain Lefebvre, Dmitri Mironov, Todd Gill, Bob Rouse and Jamie Macoun. Berube has a defence of Morgan Rielly, Chris Tanev, Jake McCabe, Simon Benoit, Oliver Ekman-Larsson and either Timothy Liljegren or Conor Timmins. One defence is not a whole lot better than the other. But Burns had this first-year magic about him everywhere he went. He took Montreal to a Cup final in his first NHL season. He took the Leafs to the semifinal against Los Angeles in 1993. His Boston team went from 61 points to 91 in Burns' first campaign and, in Jersey, he won his only Stanley Cup with the Devils. Berube won his only Cup in St. Louis coming in as interim coach in 2018-19. Advertisement 6 Article content The Leafs are his third coaching assignment, his second time starting anew with a club. Toronto is coming off a 105-point season. There isn't a lot of place to grow in terms of number of points: The growth will measured in other ways, from special teams play to compete level to defensive mindset, so many of the aspects both Burns and Berube consider mandatory. “On our team,” Gilmour said. “We had a rule. You can't turn the puck over at your blueline in the first two minutes of the game or in the last two minutes of the period. That was a no-no. I did that once in the first minutes. I don't think I got on again until the third period that night. “That's what it was like with Burnsy. The rules were clear. You had to abide by them.” When Burns was coaching the Leafs to the semifinals in 1994 and lost to Quinn in Vancouver, Berube was playing for the Washington Capitals. One of his closest friends, then and now, was Dale Hunter. Advertisement 7 Article content They would watch hockey together back then and talk of becoming coaches one day. They talked about what they do and how they would do it. Hunter has since gone on to become the premier coach in junior hockey and Berube is now coaching in the market where hockey matters most. When Burns first looked at his new Maple Leafs roster, at the beginning of training camp at what is now called Herb Carnegie Arena in North York, he said: “This team isn't as bad as I was led to believe it was.” Berube starts with a Leafs team loaded up front with Auston Matthews , William Nylander and Mitch Marner. This team has been at its worst when it matters most. The judgment for Berube's first season will come in April and May, the very same months Burns became legendary as a Maple Leaf to be remembered forever. x.com/simmonssteve Article content Share this article in your social network Share this Story : SIMMONS: Is Maple Leafs coach Craig Berube the new Pat Burns in Toronto? Comments Join the Conversation Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. 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Article content When Keith Pelley was living in Europe for a decade, running that version of the PGA Tour, he would often tell people of his love of Canada and his love of Toronto.

Advertisement 1 Share this Story : CEO Keith Pelley is hoping World Cup can help elevate Toronto back to being a great city CEO Keith Pelley is hoping World Cup can help elevate Toronto back to being a great city Author of the article: Article content When Keith Pelley was living in Europe for a decade, running that version of the PGA Tour, he would often tell people of his love of Canada and his love of Toronto. He said it from the heart. He said it with a certain pride and reverence. Living elsewhere, he never stopped missing the city he grew up in, the place he called home. Nobody was a bigger ambassador for Toronto and Canada than Pelley. He used to call it the best city and the best country. A lot of us, living here, used to say the same thing. Pelley moved back to Toronto last April, after 10 years away, returning to a city he knew and didn't know — not necessarily the one he remembered best. Like a lot of us, he hears it now way too often. That the city isn't what it used to be. That the country isn't what it used to be. That there is more to worry about, more to dislike, more to be bothered by than ever before. “The way they speak about our country and the way they speak about our city is not with the reverence I spoke about for 10 years in Europe,” Pelley said Wednesday, as guest speaker of the Toronto Board of Trade. Then he said what you normally wouldn't hear at a Board of Trade lunch. Advertisement 2 Article content CEO Keith Pelley is hoping World Cup can help elevate Toronto back to being a great city Back to video “It makes me sad. It's not the city that it used to be, not the country that it was 10 years ago.” Pelley is the CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Ltd, the largest sporting conglomerate in North America, maybe the world. MLSE owns the Maple Leafs, the Raptors, the Argos, the Marlies, Toronto FC, a bunch of restaurants and real estate and just about anything else it wants to own. And what Pelley wants more than anything is for Toronto to return to being the Toronto he remembers, the city he reveres, and for Canada to return to being the country he adores. And it is rare to hear anyone in a position of such power and prominence to be this honest, be this glib and this outspoken in a format such as this. And then his eyes lit up and began to dance when he spoke of the World Cup of Soccer coming to Toronto and Canada in 2026. And all it can do for the city, for the people, for the country. “This isn't just a sporting event,” said Pelley and he was quick to point out that MLSE is not making “one penny on the World Cup” which we may or not believe. “Six hundred and three days to go,” said Pelley, who called the World Cup the secret sauce for the city. “Are we behind (in the planning)?” asked Pelley. “Absolutely?” And then he spoke about the power of sport as a community builder and healer. “We have an opportunity to do something special. So we can talk about (our) city in the greatest of terms. It's like having six Super Bowls. Can you imagine that?” The Board of Trade is hardly the platform for anyone to wonder about the state of its city. But you can hardly go anywhere these days without someone talking about what Toronto used to be. Before all the traffic. Before the housing costs. Before the homelessness. Before the constant construction. Before the crime. Before the hatred. Before the anti-semitism. Before this Mayor. A lot of befores that hit too close to home for far too many of us. The city we used to love and brag about. The city we're not quite so sure about anymore. Pelley understands all the responsibility that goes along with his job at MLSE. There is all that money and all those games and teams that have fallen short of expectations. He has, at times, to speak about the Leafs and their annual playoff failures that he has had nothing to do with. He has to speak about the nearly irrelevant Raptors and the beginning of the rebuild. He has to speak about the disaster that has become Toronto FC, the wayward soccer team going nowhere. He has to speak about the Argos, the team that wins more and draws less than almost anyone in their corporation. That's all on his plate. Advertisement 3 Article content Yet when they opened the floor to questions yesterday, there wasn't even a matter brought up about the Leafs, about the Raptors, about anything to do with Toronto teams. Normally, the business crowd and the sports crowd mixes well together at one. This crowd was more business and less sports, or maybe just shy to put their hands up and ask anything in public. It's hard to go anywhere these days in this city and not be asked a derisive question about the Leafs. I get it all the time. But Pelley got a free pass Wednesday about anything that wasn't the World Cup. He did mention the Leafs while talking to the room. “I think they haven't won since 1967,” he said. “That's what I keep hearing…I really want to feel that (championship) again.” Pelley was president of the Argos when they won the Grey Cup in 2004. He was in Europe when the Raptors won the NBA title in 2019 and when TFC won an MLS championship before that. He even played minor soccer in Etobicoke growing up, when the fastest kid on his team was a blonde haired young guy named Doug Ford. Pelley was the head of the consortium that televised the Vancouver Olympics and he's still like a proud papa when he talks about Sidney Crosby's scoring the winning goal for Team Canada and 26.5 million people tuning in to watch part of that game. The largest audience in Canadian television history. “That's sport bringing people together,” said Pelley. “There will be 750-million plus people watching Canada's first game in the World Cup in 2026. “Now it's all on us to get behind it … I don't think the city knows what we're about to get into to. I don't think we understand. I would love the legacy of the World Cup to be that football, in such an ethnic city, elevated us to a whole different level. Wouldn't that be something?” [email protected] twitter.com/simmonssteve Article content Share this article in your social network Share this Story : CEO Keith Pelley is hoping World Cup can help elevate Toronto back to being a great city Comments Join the Conversation Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information. Latest National Stories News Near Elliot Lake Featured Local Savings Notice for the Postmedia Network This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here . By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

You probably don't know the name Wynton McManis, but you should. He's one of Toronto's best players, if not the best player.