Leafs will lean on lessons learned last spring A first-round loss to the Capitals last season provided Toronto’s young stars with an invaluable understanding of what it takes to win in the playoffs, Kristen Shilton writes.

Kristen Shilton TSN Toronto Maple Leafs Reporter Follow|Archive

TORONTO – There’s no substitute for experience. Not in life and not when it comes to the Stanley Cup playoffs.

A rookie-laden Maple Leafs’ lineup got a tantalizingly short first taste of the playoffs last spring when they fell in six games to the Washington Capitals in their first-round series. Freshmen like Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews have since grown into sophomores who powered Toronto to a franchise-best regular season and into a first-round playoff meeting with the Boston Bruins.

Expectations are markedly higher for Toronto this year than last as they prepare for Game 1 on Thursday. But now the team’s young stars have an invaluable understanding of what’s ahead – and of how to find success in the league’s second season.

“You want to produce, and play both ways with the puck, do what you know you can do and most importantly help the team win,” said Matthews after practice on Monday. “No matter what it is, whether scoring goals or getting assists, [plus] you can do other things like win faceoffs, block shots, and help the team defensively, too. That’s what you see from guys like [Jonathan] Toews, [Patrice] Bergeron, and [Anze] Kopitar winning Cups. They have to produce offensively but they can do it defensively with the puck too. That’s what it takes.”

Matthews’ 69-point rookie campaign was the best in Leafs’ history, and earned him the NHL’s Calder Trophy as rookie of the year. He carried that regular-season momentum over to the playoffs against Washington, where Matthews put up four goals and one assist in the series.

His sophomore campaign has been more frustrating, with injuries plaguing Matthews almost from the start. He's sat out with three separate ailments, collectively costing him 20 games along the way to a 63-point season. Matthews has put a recent shoulder injury behind him to put together a nine-game point streak heading into the postseason, where every player who yearns to be great must shine.

“If you want to be considered a good player, you have to do it at this time of year,” said Leafs coach Mike Babcock. “That’s what the good players are, they’re winners. They find a way to win. You have to do it when it matters, and it matters now. That’s how you separate yourself from the group. When you become a serial winner, you get a ton of respect. That’s playoff time.”

While Matthews looked dominant throughout his first postseason run, Marner struggled to translate his dynamic offence into suffocating playoff games. He scored in Game 1 against Washington, and then was mostly dormant from there, finishing the series with four points (goal, three assists).

After a slow start to his sophomore year, the second half of this season has been transcendent for Marner – since mid-January, Marner has been the Leafs’ most productive forward, carrying them offensively through the last 10-game span without Matthews en route to a 69-point season.

Marner is playing with more confidence than he ever has in the NHL, harkening back to 2015-16 when he led the Ontario Hockey League’s London Knights with 44 points in 18 playoff games to secure a Memorial Cup tournament berth and eventual victory. Now that he knows what to expect from the NHL playoffs, Marner is eager to prove he can get it done at this level.

“Anyone who goes to the playoffs wants to be known as that [dominant guy],” he said. “You’re going out there, making sure you’re doing everything you can to lead the way. That’s the most important thing. When you get out there you’re letting people know you’ll do anything to just help them win.”

It’s a laughably overused cliché when players underscore the importance of playing a “full 60 minutes,” but what Marner took away from last April is how essential – not to mention difficult – that becomes once teams are vying for hockey's big prize.

Going up against a team with ample postseason experience like Boston means that commitment to every shift becomes paramount.

“It’s a grind every moment, there’s not a lot of space. For 60 minutes, that’s not easy,” Marner said. “So you just have to stay calm and wait for your moments to come. A lot of players on their team have been on the grind of a long playoff run, and obviously we have a couple of those guys too, but there are a lot of us in here where that series last year was our first time so now we have to be ready to play. It’s going to be a hard series.”

Calling the playoffs a “whole different animal,” Marner hopes past experience will make a difference once the Bruins’ series gets underway. There are no practice drills Babcock can concoct or video he can show that truly replicates the playoff atmosphere. To one day be among the top-tier players they admire, Toronto’s brightest will have to rise to the upcoming challenge.

“It’s called will, it’s called determination,” said Babcock of what separates the best skaters. “They’re not going away. They’re just going to stick with it and they know most shifts in the game are 50-50; in other words, nothing happens. But there’s going to be one shift where they get their opportunity and they’re going to make you pay. They’re just waiting to wear you out.”