The next month or so promises to be a busy time for Maple Leafs GM Lou Lamoriello as he prepares his team for a playoff drive with the trade deadline looming on March 1. It also promises to be far more enjoyable for a playoff-starved fan base and for Lamoriello, in his second year at the helm, with a team that is led by rookies Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander. The Star caught up with Lamoriello on Wednesday:

Do you think these rookies are going to hit a wall?

I don’t believe in hitting walls, or running out of gas, or being tired. It all comes down to how you take care of yourself and what your commitment is to your profession. You don’t get wrapped up in distractions. This is a competitive game, and you have to stay sharp. The only time (you get tired) is when you allow yourself to slip, (like) enjoying the extra-curricular activities in a way that takes away from your job. There will be peaks and valleys, a little scoring slump, but you’re going to come out of it. The remarkable thing about the young players we have here is they want to be good. They’re willing to pay the price to be good, and they’re not really young in age, except for two or three of them. Their maturity is outstanding.

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How important is this playoff race to their development?

You always want to be in a playoff race, and then you want to be in the playoffs. Everything is important. What you can’t do is get wrapped up at looking at the result. You have to continue to do the things that will allow you to grow, and let the end result take care of itself. You have to do the preparation. You compete against yourself to be the best you can. You don’t compete against anybody else. But it’s absolutely important, absolutely something you want. What we’ve done is create a foundation for something that can be sustained. We’re not getting off that.

What premium do you put on making the playoffs this year?

Anyone who says they do not want to make the playoffs, they’re not telling you the truth or there is something wrong with them. As far as the premium, it’s put on everything you have control of, to give you the opportunity to have success. The forefront is what you have control of today, and making sure there’s no slippage.

Has this season been more fun for you than last season?

The game, when it stops becoming fun, you get out. When you enjoy the people you’re working with, and you enjoy the players because they’re committed to having success as a group . . . everybody wants to have individual success, but there’s no greater feeling than having a team know they needed each other to have success. That’s what makes it enjoyable. When you win, you enjoy it. When things don’t go well, you don’t enjoy it.

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Can you do anything about the number of back-to-back games the team plays?

When you look at a schedule, it always depends on how you’re playing at the time if it’s a good schedule or a bad schedule. We would like to have as few back-to-backs as you can — everybody would — but that’s not going to get in our way. Don’t even look at it as something negative. It’s how you’re playing.

Are you comfortable with how the team is set up for the expansion draft?

Yes. Plenty can change. There is plenty of time between now and the expansion draft. You keep monitoring it. The old expression of the five-year plan that changes every day applies to the expansion draft.

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How busy are you and your fellow GMs going to be at the deadline?

I’ve been at this a number of years, and that question gets asked all the time. I think I’ve been wrong more than right — when I think nothing is going to happen and quite a bit happens, and vice-versa. All we can do is focus on our thought process and not worry about what other people are thinking.

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