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The Toronto Maple Leafs have one of the more difficult tasks in the upcoming Stanley Cup Playoffs, facing the defensive-minded Columbus Blue Jackets in the play-in round, but that will be even more of a challenge since the best-of-five series will take place after months of inaction and a short training camp.
"It's just gonna be a weird feeling. I mean you always get that training camp, (and) it's hard to really feel like you’re in game shape until you get into that first game." Leafs winger Mitch Marner said in a conference call on Thursday. "(We're) just making sure every day (that) we're going to try and dial-in everything in our game. Defensively, offensively, just supporting the puck over the ice. That's something that if we do very well, then we can be very successful team. We just got to make sure we're ready."
The Leafs had one of the top offenses in the NHL, but were plagued by inconsistency and struggled against teams with a defensive mindset. The Blue Jackets were not expected to contend for the playoffs after the departure of Artemi Panarin, Sergei Bobrovsky, Ryan Dzingel, and Matt Duchene in free agency, but overachieved under head coach John Tortorella and finished with the same amount of points as Toronto before the season was paused in mid-March.
"I don't think we need to change anything. I think we know what we need to do. It's just making sure when we get out there, we're doing all the small things, we're doing it right we're doing it correctly. I also think for our team we started (before the pause) really keeping each other accountable for what what's happening on the ice." Marner said.
Every game is not gonna be perfect, every game is not going to be where we want it to be. It's gonna be a hard every single game we play against (Columbus). They come out flying in every game (and) playing hard. I think we all recognize that and we all know that's the challenge at hand, so for us just making sure throughout this time we're trying to just (getting) our legs back under us (and) trying to get our conditioning up."
"The NHL has everything under control through what I've seen these the last week or so with how (they are doing) everything at the rink and doing all the right things to make sure no one's gonna be in a bad place if anything happens." Marner said "I think they're going to do what's best for their athletes and make sure that they're going to look after us and take care of us."
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