“I’m not the planner dude.” Jake Muzzin wants to make that clear as he strips off his pads and the heavy hard-plastic knee braces underneath, as he briefly squeezes his wide beard into something more pharaonic, as he grins. He’s not that guy. He just takes care of some things, that’s all.

“No, I’m not good at it,” says Muzzin, a day before the Toronto Maple Leafs played their second game of the season Friday night in Columbus. “Really, I’m awful. I don’t like calling people and planning. I like someone else doing it and I just show up, you know?”

But the 30-year-old defenceman does it, some of it, because he knows how this works. When the Leafs acquired Muzzin before the trade deadline from the Los Angeles Kings last season, it was a shock: His wife Courtney was seven months pregnant, his three dogs were happy in L.A’s idyllic South Bay, and he figured that was their life. He had a Stanley Cup ring. He was on a good contract. But he got moved.

It was a pain. His wife gave birth between Games 4 and 5 of Toronto’s first-round series with Boston, during which Muzzin and Nikita Zaitsev were fed the best line in hockey; it was both bad news and good news that Muzzin soon had time off. The Woodstock, Ont. native has settled in now. His little girl, Luna, is six months old. They have help from friends and family. The team’s been great. It’s good now.

Which means Muzzin can focus on his job, which is being the most physical player on a skill team, a reliable veteran who has been there. A guy who is paired with dragster Tyson Barrie on a team that is heavily reliant on its top four defencemen and is aiming for a Cup.

“Yeah, I think he’s just such a confident professional,” says Barrie. “And just everything he does, he seems to do it the proper way. He’s kind of a calming influence over all the guys, and it’s nice to be able to have him to fall back on a little bit. When I’m not sure about something or whatever it is, I can just kind of ask him and he seems to have the answer. So it’s good.”

And yeah, Muzzin makes some phone calls, sets up some dinners, co-runs the fantasy football league with Zach Hyman, arranges the Leafs’ outing to a Bills-Patriots game. You know, team stuff. Someone has to.

“It was just an idea,” Muzzin says. “It was one idea … I know how important that stuff is, and I wanted to make sure we did a few things together.”

In Los Angeles he was so young. He arrived on a contender and the league was crazier then; he says his first-ever playoff series against St. Louis in 2013, with hulking skaters such as Ryan Reeves and Chris Stewart and Roman Polak and David Backes trying to hit you as hard as they could for six games, “probably took a year off my life.”

Then in 2014, the Kings won the Cup after a classic seven-game conference final with Chicago, culminating with overtime in Game 7. And Muzzin lived it, but … maybe not enough.

“I mean, I hate to talk about my other experiences, but when I was in L.A. it was like, it was almost like, holy s---, we won,” says Muzzin. “We just kept enjoying the grind and enjoying the process that we had with each other, and we kept wanting to win and win and win.

“And then, you know, finally we won enough and then it was the end of it. So I (went from) young and a little bit naive at the time to where I just enjoyed playing with the guys. And I think we have that here. We have that youth and that, let’s just go play and see what happens. And you know, with the structure from the coaches and the good game plan in place, I think we have a good shot, yeah.”

But on 2014, he has some mild regret.

“I know that some guys don’t get even that opportunity to be in that situation,” says Muzzin. “And I was fortunate and lucky enough to be there at that time. But looking back, I wish I would have enjoyed it a little bit more — I would have enjoyed the process more. I mean, it was a hard-fought battle, but I kind of just don’t even remember it because I was just living every day, just going. You know, I never really took a (step) back and looked at what we accomplished. I never did that.”

He’s enjoying this now. When asked about playing with Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner specifically, Muzzin says, “Every day something goes on where I just appreciate being on their team. You know? Whether it’s even me getting beat in practice or seeing some of their skill that they can just pull out of a hat … (it’s a) ‘sit back and watch the show’ feeling almost.”

But those guys are kids. It’s the fourth-youngest team in the league. So Muzzin doesn’t like co-ordinating stuff, but he does it because he knows how to make things seem comfortable. Hyman says Muzzin, with a baby on the way and still swaying with the dislocation of leaving the peaceful Zen of L.A., made that transition look easy, even as it wasn’t. Muzzin makes a lot of uncomfortable things look easy. He wants them to enjoy this, too.

“It’s easy to want to stay at home and watch TV or play video games,” says Hyman. “But you know when you’re out and being social, you form bonds and relationships and things that carry over outside of hockey, but also in hockey when you’re playing. You know, there’s no better feeling than when you’re playing with your best friends and you’re winning, right?”

“I honestly think it helps,” says Muzzin. “When guys get away and act crazy or act themselves — they’re not on edge, they’re not scared of the coach, they’re not, you know, trying to impress; they’re just being themselves. And I think once you get to know everyone, who they are really away from the rink, and then you have a better feeling of what they’re going through, or what you see on the ice, or what you can help them with. I mean it’s just, it goes a long way. So I think it was important.”

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He turns to his locker, then turns back. He wants to make one thing clear.

“I’m not the planner dude.”

Yeah, yeah. Close enough.