Every season begins with intrigue and for the Toronto Maple Leafs to still considers itself a Cup contender, it must sort things out quick.
Goaltending is always the go-to story when Leaf camp has opened in recent years – and rarely is it good news.he If not injury it was the dust still settling from previous playoff collapses of James Reimer, Frederik Andersen, Jack Campbell and Ilya Samsonov.
Having seen how well Anthony Stolarz and Woll a) play and b) happily co-exist, the issue this week is contractual – with potential for a positive outcome. General manager Brad Treliving, while stickhandling around a question about keeping money on hand for next year should a certain unsigned star forward with a year to go on his deal be available, flipped the script to Stolarz. “History has shown there’s a lot of players who don’t sign who do get signed,” Treliving said “That’s a good segue to Stolarz. Anthony has a year left, we’ve been engaged with his representative . Nothing to announce today, but I’m confident until proven otherwise we’ll find something that will work.”Thanks for signing up!The next issue of Your Midday Sun will soon be in your inbox.Ideally, Treliving wants this settled before any chance it becomes a distraction and Stolarz indicated the same this week in an interview with Sportsnet. Where the Leafs – wisely – held off giving big tickets to Campbell and Samsonov on small sample sizes, Stolarz did enough in 34-injury shortened appearances to bump his current $2.5-million US deal. His .926 save percentage led the NHL, while Woll, 27, also did well in a personal best 42 appearances and two years to run on his contract.“Sitting up here a year ago, that was the big question mark,” Treliving said. “In their body of work, neither had taken the ball and run with it 40 games. They supported each other. In the league there’s a handful of guys who’ll play 55 or 60 games they’re getting fewer and fewer. It’s more of a tandem league.”While the five former Team Canada world junior players who were facing sexual assault charges from 2018 were found not guilty this summer, they still can’t play until December. When they are cleared, former Calgary Flame Dillon Dube has been linked to his old GM as a possible free agent.“I’d say we’re focused on the 73 players we have here right now, figuring out where that fits. I don’t normally talk about any player not under contract. Obviously, there are special circumstances around those . You’d have to be very comfortable at the end of the day on the ice and off the ice. We’d have to go through a process.“I’ve had Dillon as a player, I know him, but we have too many guys and too few chairs right now.”Berube and his team had to own that Game 7 letdown against Florida all summer long, indeed their lack of killer instinct at key times in that entire series. It’s Berube’s second year with a team he knows much better, which could mean less patience with some players who have slow starts or them getting a longer leash. “There’s obviously things we look into to try and get better in that situation,” he said. “It’s OK to bend in those situations, but not break. We have to get over that hump for sure.“It’s teaching them to get more mentally dialed in for those games. You come to Toronto for a big game at home, there’s a lot of pressure, we know that. But we all have to deal with it better than we did.” Atoning for the Florida finish, the ninth time Toronto has failed to clear the second round, won’t be the focus, however, when the team hits the ice Thursday. There are four or five days of initial workouts, six exhibition games and 82 in the regular season as precursor.Like many in Toronto, Berube and Treliving can’t stop raving about the Blue Jays. Both are big ball fans have expressed admiration for manager John Schneider, whom they’ve met, for his people skills, field strategy and reciprocal love of hockey.And Schneider’s team could actually be their unwitting ally at a time when public pressure on the Leafs is once more the topic du jour, thanks to Mitch Marner. It was noted that fewer media attended Wednesday’s camp opener and if the Jays are still talk of the town in mid to late October, few in the Leafs orbit will likely complain. When the late Pat Burns came here from Montreal to coach, he related his good friend/ apartment roommate Buck Rodgers, was under his orders to keep the Expos in the headlines as long as possible in autumn and early spring. Burns loved that it diverted both English and French language media from the Habs. As Leaf coach, Burns lucked out again when the team’s 10-game win streak to start the ‘93-94 season was often a footnote to the Jays second World Series win. The Leafs wouldn’t mind that in the first month of a long season, win or lose, they get to be a backburner story.
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