Marleau strikes up fast friendship with Matthews, Marner The Toronto Maple Leafs’ oldest player has formed a bond with the team’s two youngest, Mark Masters writes.

TSN Toronto reporter Mark Masters checks in daily with news and notes from Maple Leafs practices and game-day skates. The team practised at the MasterCard Centre on Tuesday.

The Toronto Maple Leafs’ oldest player and the team’s two youngest players have struck up a fast friendship. Patrick Marleau, a father of four young sons, hangs out with 20-year-olds Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner pretty much every night during road trips. He sits with them on the flights as well.

“Everybody says Patty’s got four kids at home and two on the road, because he kind of takes care of me and Mitchy,” Matthews said with a big smile. “Yeah, he’s like 38 going on 20 so it’s fun hanging out with him. He’s been great to us.”

“It just kind of happened organically, I think,” Marleau said. “They’re fun guys to be around, that’s for sure.”

The trio all like watching movies and playing cards so there is some common ground, although the age gap is hard to ignore at times.

“He’s caught on to little catch phrases and stuff like texting and little shortcuts,” Matthews said. “I texted him something and then I said, ‘HBU’ like, 'How about you?' He asked Mitch what that meant and we thought it was the funniest thing, because we’re 20-years-old and familiar with all these little [texting] shortcuts. We know all them and Patty is a little bit confused.”

“It’s good practice,” Marleau noted with a grin. “I’ll learn all the lingo and maybe I’ll be the cool dad.”

Marleau’s experience is an asset in the card games.

“We played poker once and Patty took us for all our money,” Matthews admitted. “Then we played Old Maid.”

Really?

“Yeah, because I didn’t know how to play Euchre a couple weeks ago so we were playing simple card games,” Matthews said.

Not anymore.

“We just taught Auston how to play Euchre,” Marner said, “so it’s pretty funny, because now he’s absolutely addicted to it and now he wants to play constantly, which kind of sucks because sometimes you just want to sit there and relax on your phone and he’s begging you to play Euchre.”

As for the movies, Marner is the resident critic and in charge of choosing the flicks.

“We let Mitchy pick a couple, but he’s on the outs right now so we have to pick for him,” Marleau said with a chuckle.

Marner has no preferred genre, but tends to steer clear of horror films. As for Marleau?

“He’s got four kids so if we’re watching any kind of movie I think he’s down,” Marner said. “I think he’s almost seen every cartoon movie or gore movie so I don’t think he has any kind of taste in movies now.”

Head coach Mike Babcock can only smile when informed of the blooming bromance between Marleau, Matthews and Marner.

“Well, that’s a home run for us,” he said. “I had Nick Lidstrom and now I have Patty Marleau and those are fine, fine, fine human beings to say the least and they make people better. They don’t say nothing – they just do what they do every day and do it better than everybody else. And pretty soon you look at him and say, ‘Hey, he’s got 100-plus game winners, been in the league for 1,500 or whatever games, he’s been doing what he loves to do and he comes every day and he doesn’t say nothing, he just works hard.’ Not a bad concept. So, you’re hoping it rubs off.”

As for Marleau, this is also a chance to pay it forward after he was mentored by the likes of Kelly Hrudey, Mike Ricci, Tony Granato and Owen Nolan during his early days with the Sharks.

“They were all great to me,” Marleau recalled. “I couldn’t have come in with a better group of veterans."

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The Leafs are securely in a playoff spot and enjoying a couple days between games after a mostly successful Western Canada trip. Things are actually fairly calm around the team, at least by the usual standards. The coach certainly has noticed.

“It’s gotten a little quiet around here,” Babcock said before a question was asked at his daily media session. “I’m disappointed. Let’s get some rumours going right now. Let’s get some s--- that really doesn’t matter. What do you want to go with?”

A reporter shot back, “Any suggestions?”

“No,” Babcock said with a laugh, “but that’s your job.”

The coach was in great spirits offering expansive answers to a host of questions. And, in light of Marleau’s mentorship of Matthews and Marner, Babcock shared some memories of his coaching role models, including Jacques Lemaire.

“I always tell Jacques, my first year in Anaheim we went into Minny and I thought we were all ready to go and I watched his morning skate and how fast everything was going compared to my morning skate and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me here? We’re in a different league.’ I remember sneaking into his practice, because Jacques would stop practice if he saw you so I snuck in, and hid behind a pole and learned something. I call a drill we do the Jacques Lemaire forecheck drill and he said, ‘I never, ever did that drill,’ and I said, ‘Well, I stole it from you,’ and he said, ‘Well, you changed it then!’ Anyway, you learn from all people and some people help you on purpose and some people you just admire how their team plays and so you watch them and learn.”

Lemaire is currently working as a special assignment coach with the Leafs.

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After the main practice wrapped up on Wednesday, the top Leafs shootout options stayed out for some extra work on breakaways. Last year, Toronto struggled in the skills competition going 1-8. So far this season, the team is 1-1.

“It’s something that probably everyone would like to work on more,” Matthews said. “It’s always fun to mess around and work on different things.”

“That was our first one in a while,” Marner noted of the after-practice session. “I think it’s up to the goalie coach [Steve Briere] when he decides … last season shootouts happened quite a bit so we were practising quite a bit. Hopefully it doesn’t happen too often.”

Matthews said the moves by Marner and Marleau stood out the most. Here are the highlights:

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Lines at Tuesday’s practice:

Hyman-Matthews-Brown

Marleau-Kadri-Komarov

van Riemsdyk-Bozak-Marner

Martin-Moore-Nylander

Soshnikov, Leivo

Rielly-Hainsey

Gardiner-Zaitsev

Borgman-Polak

Carrick

Andersen

McElhinney