Two years ago, Ryan Getzlaf had a dreadful NHL season, scoring 11 goals, looking nothing like the star he was and the star he is now.

And just about everybody thought he was done as a big-time player.

This is how the Maple Leafs look at Randy Carlyle now. They see a terrific coach who had a dreadful season. They scoured the market place — both Dave Nonis and Brendan Shanahan — and kept asking the same question: Who’s better? And the answer they came up with was like one of those Mel Lastman commercials: Nooo-body.

Shanahan and Nonis, in their first major decision together, have taken a most unpopular stance. By not only agreeing to bring Carlyle back as coach, they have given him the keys to the dressing room for this coming season and two more after that. That may be logistical — Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment is forever paying someone not to play or coach — but they are more than adamant that Carlyle is up to the appointment.

Nonis, like Carlyle, like Shanahan, took stock at the end of the disastrous season, took a step back, did their analysis and saw more promise than most would find from this awful Leafs season.

They love Jonathan Bernier, the goaltender, but they would love him more if he played more games. They love the first line of Phil Kessel, Tyler Bozak and James van Riemsdyk, which gave fits to opposition coaches. They love the development of the young defenders, Morgan Rielly and Jake Gardiner. That’s about where the love ends for now.

But as Nonis points out, the best parts of the Leafs roster remind him of the best parts of the Canucks team about the time he was fired in Vancouver, after a terrible second half cost them the playoffs way back when.

Nonis thinks you can build with some of this roster and the right kind of change: He expects to be active in the trade market over the next few months. And he thinks there is still life in Carlyle the coach, a career winner, whose team and philosophies seemed to get hammered all in the very same season.

Not only does the team have to change, but the coach has to change, his staff will change, and the expectations of the players will change. This was a total collapse, but the general manager and coach are in place, the easily disposable assistant coaches are gone. This is the convenient way out for Shanahan and Nonis, although the easiest thing to do was to fire Carlyle. But Shanahan is not really interested in convenience: He had to be convinced Carlyle was right for the job. And, somehow, Nonis did it.

Had they fired Carlyle, he would have been hired by the Florida Panthers.

And if there was pressure on Carlyle to succeed through the post-Olympic collapse, there is even more pressure on him now. He talked last season about a template, but rarely was his hockey template evident. He talked about increased time in the offensive zone, but the Leafs were a rush team, a one-and-out team, as he calls it, and too fragile without the puck.

Things a coach can shape — neutral-zone play, defensive-zone coverage, the penalty-kill, play without the puck — were among the Leafs’ biggest weaknesses. With reasonably good goaltending, they gave up 256 goals last season. The eight remaining teams in the playoffs gave up around 200 on average. That’s an enormous jump Carlyle must make with his team if he is take them to the playoffs and beyond.

Carlyle kept using the word “mind-boggling” in the conference call interview on Thursday. As in, it was mind-boggling what happened to the team, what happened to the power play, what happened in winnable games, and he said: “We weren’t able to get the team back on the rails.”

Some have called it mind-boggling that he returns. That’s understandable. But I’ve seen the other side of Randy Carlyle: Forget Game 7 in Boston and the collapse. Go back to Game 2 of that playoff series. The Leafs were trampled in Game 1: Men versus boys. They were completely over-matched.

But Carlyle coached them and coaxed them back into the series, to the point they had Boston frustrated and confused. They wisely adjusted to Boston’s pinching defencemen and took advantage of that. They utilized their speed and won three of the next five games. That was terrific coaching. Ask Claude Julien, a terrific coach himself.

Game 7 was a lot like the last 20 games of this season. Mind-boggling, inexplicable, an unadulterated team collapse. But you can’t kill Carlyle for Game 7 and not applaud him for Games 2-6. It’s the same guy. Same coach.

Carlyle won 47 games and a Stanley Cup with Anaheim because he had Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger on defence ... and then won 47 games with the Ducks without either of them.

Now he says he wants a team that is hard on the puck. The Leafs are young and fast, not necessarily physical or strong. They don’t have the perfect centres and, if you do have a player such as Getzlaf, Anze Kopitar, Patrice Bergeron, not to mention Jonathan Toews or Sidney Crosby, it sure alters the picture.

But Nonis believes, and Carlyle believes, they have a roster good enough to make the playoffs, before making the logical changes that will come. Whatever Shanahan thinks, he has kept mostly to himself. He is still figuring out this team and this organization. He believes the change in staff with Carlyle will make Carlyle a better coach.

And Nonis, taking a page from the Marv Levy school of decision-making, isn’t about to be influenced by fans. If you listen to fans, Levy famously said, soon you’ll be sitting with them.

“If you’re worried about optics in this market, it’s going to be a disaster,” said Nonis. “You have to make a decision that you think is the best decision for the organization. This is a guy we believe can do the job.

“If you’re looking at trying to please people, you are probably going to make some poor decisions.”

And as Floyd Smith said when he traded away the draft pick that turned into Niedermayer in a deal for Tom Kurvers: “If I’m wrong, they’ll fire me.”

He was. And they did.

steve.simmons@sunmedia.ca

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