Minggu, 07 Mei 2023

LeBrun: How can the Leafs escape their 0-2 hole? Wisdom from coaches who have been there before - The Athletic

Travis Green lived the mayhem of the playoffs as a player in Toronto and as a head coach in Vancouver.

The noise is real. That can be a positive when you’re rolling. But it can backfire when things go sideways.

So yes, he’s got a few thoughts watching from afar as the Maple Leafs attempt to rally back from an 0-2 series deficit against the Panthers.

“From a coaching standpoint, when you’re in the playoffs, it’s really important, I find, to know where your team is at and decide where your team is at,” Green told The Athletic on Friday. “Structurally, both teams are going to make adjustments from game to game. But maybe in this case, psychologically being down 2-0 is not what the Leafs expected.

“Especially when you’re in a market like Toronto, there’s going to be a lot of noise around that.”

Oh, just a bit.

Green remembers it from playing on the Leafs in 2001-02, when they reached the Eastern Conference final.

“Your players feel it. They want to win. They know the importance of it,” Green said. “The mental side of it is so important in the playoffs. Inspiring a group to feel good about themselves is huge.”

It’s a balancing act. If you’re Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe, there’s the tactical side, but there’s also the mental side — making sure the team has the right frame of mind entering Game 3 on Sunday night in Sunrise, Florida.

“Structurally, there’s always going to be small tweaks you’re working on from game to game, and there’s going to be areas from a coaching standpoint where you know your team needs to get better,” Green said. “It’s not just the losing team that does that but the winning team as well.

“There are probably a few areas that Toronto knows it has to be better in. But then there’s the psychological side of it, which maybe for me might be just as important or more important as this time of year and in this situation when you lose those two first two games at home, which really you never imagined that happening.”

Long-time coach Paul MacLean, who spent two years as an adviser to Keefe and the Leafs coaching staff, shared this when asked what he has seen so far in Round 2: “They haven’t gotten to their game enough and when they do, they haven’t scored. (Sergei Bobrovsky) has been very good. All starts with (defensive-zone) exits — Leafs being second on too many dumped pucks. (The) result is too much time defending and (Florida) gets to their game and have scored.”

Former Canucks head coach Bruce Boudreau sees a Leafs team that so far has been pulled into Panthers-style games.

“Florida is forcing the Leafs to play a physical game, and they don’t want to play a physical game,” Boudreau said Friday. “They just want to go up and down the ice and score. So they’re playing out of their comfort zone, I think, and that’s right into Florida’s comfort zone.”

Boudreau remembers his days coaching the high-octane Capitals when the Flyers would try to do that to them.

“The Flyers wanted six penalties against six penalties in a night. They were so comfortable playing that way and we weren’t,” Boudreau said. “When the Leafs are running all over the place and doing the same thing as Florida, that’s not the way they want to play, but they’re sort of being roped into playing the way Florida wants them to play.”

The other thing Boudreau sees is Toronto’s lack of consistency in-game.

“They’re too spotty,” Boudreau said. “They’ll come out for five minutes and play great, then they can’t get the puck out of their own zone for five minutes, and then they’ll have a few great, skilled shifts, then they go to sleep. They’re not playing with any consistency if you ask me. Or playing the right way on a continual basis.”

The Panthers were able to get the Bruins out of their game plan at times in the opening round and are doing it again with the Leafs. I asked Keefe about it during his media call Friday. Is Florida’s forecheck the primary reason for that?

He gave a thoughtful and lengthy answer, which gave me the sense it’s very much on his mind ahead of Game 3:

“Well, yes, their forecheck is strong,” he said. “It’s the strength of their team. It was in the regular season, as well. They were one of the premier forechecking teams in the NHL. That’s carried forward into the playoffs.

“That said, when I look at Games 1 and 2, you know, certainly Game 1 I didn’t think it was as much of an issue for us. Game 2 perhaps a little bit more. Impacted the first goal, for sure, but there’s some things we want to handle differently there ourselves. Didn’t make the right read on it. On goals 2 and 3, you’ve got to give some credit to Florida for staying on the hunt and staying on it, but we have full control of those pucks to make better decisions. And those decisions are ones that we got right most of the time in the Tampa series. Not always resulting in us getting to the neutral zone and establishing our game, that was a real challenge for us against Tampa, but you can at least relieve pressure and put yourself in good spots where you have structure around it.

“The nature of some of our turnovers (in Game 2) put us in some real bad spots. That was what was disappointing because that’s what we’ve been really seeking to avoid, is those big mistakes. And certainly Florida, with the way that they’re playing and how they forecheck and how they transition perhaps more importantly when they get the puck back, it makes it that much more dangerous.

“Those are things that we talked about avoiding all season long, and I thought we did a really good job against Tampa in that regard and it has not been the case here through the two games. It’s in large part why we sit in the hole that we do. We know that we need to be able to score more than we have. That said, with a 2-0 lead on home ice, we should be able to win that hockey game even if it ends up having to be 2-1. So there’s some managing of the game there for us that I thought we had taken huge steps in as a team that has not been on display here in the early going.”

There’s a lot to digest there, but a big part of it is Keefe feeling his team needs better puck management.

And let’s be clear, Toronto’s 0-2 series deficit is not insurmountable.

“Every series changes, can change very fast, which we’ve already seen happen in these playoffs with New Jersey and the Rangers,” Green said. “But there’s no doubt about it, there’s a lot of pressure for the Leafs to win the next game.

“It’s important to get the focus off being down 2-0 and on to, ‘OK, where can we be better, and what have we done well?’ Get your group to feel extremely confident about themselves.”

And while the prevailing thought has been that the Panthers, coming off a grueling, physical seven-game series with Boston were happy to get double off-days before Game 3 and again before Game 4 (Panthers coach Paul Maurice said as much), Green sees the flip side to that for the Leafs, as well.

“In this scenario, having that extra day is probably a benefit for the team being down 2-0,” Green said. “You get another day to talk to the group and refresh and let the pain kind of get in and get out — and get yourself ready for, really, they have to play their best game of the series coming up. That’s what you would hope for from a coaching standpoint.”

The Leafs showed with three road wins in Tampa they’ve got the moxie to find that level of resilience. I would expect their best game of the playoffs Sunday night. I don’t see a team that’s ready to fold.

(Top photo: John E. Sokolowski / USA Today)

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2023-05-07 03:04:23Z
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