John Tavares was giving his usual, thoughtful answers in a recent scrum when one media type made a flattering remark.

“You come out and do this every day,” the Maple Leafs centre was told.

“I play hockey every day. What’s another five minutes (with the media),” he replied.

His consistent approach on and off the ice could be a factor more than ever this coming week, when the Leafs are expected to name a captain — with Tavares the consensus favourite.

In an awkward scene in the Leafs dressing room this past week, Tavares and Morgan Rielly were both asked about the possibility of being chosen to wear the C after it was learned that Auston Matthews — who had been seen as the likely choice — was facing a charge of disorderly conduct near his Arizona home. Tavares suddenly became Captain Obvious to Rielly’s Captain Morgan.

There’s pressure on the Leafs to get the decision right, after going without a captain for more than three years. The last one, defenceman Dion Phaneuf, arrived with a flourish but saw his tenure end unceremoniously with management peddling him to anyone who would take him and his hefty contract. The Senators did in February of 2016.

While then-GM Brian Burke, who acquired Phaneuf in a seven-player trade with Calgary in 2010, credited the blue-liner with changing the attitude inside the dressing room for the better — “our practices, it was like going to a church service before he got here,” Burke said at the time — the Leafs declined steadily during his captaincy. Even before Phaneuf was traded out of town, a full-blown rebuild was underway.

Before him there was Mats Sundin, a hall of famer and the polar opposite of Phaneuf. One of the lasting images of Sundin’s captaincy linked past and present, when he was handed a Leafs flag — a passing of the torch — by goaltending great Red Horner on the team’s final night at Maple Leaf Gardens before moving to the Air Canada Centre (now Scotiabank Arena).

The franchise might do well to invite legendary captains of the past — including Darryl Sittler, Wendel Clark, Doug Gilmour and George Armstrong — when the time comes to hand out the C.

If it’s Tavares, they’ll be going with a “lead by example” type who captained the New York Islanders before signing with his hometown team. He has shown, in words and work ethic, that he has a feel for the role.

“You try to get a little bit of a pulse of the locker room, which I think our leadership group already has,” Tavares said Saturday, when asked about his captaincy with the Isles. “It’s not, all of a sudden you have 10 more things on your plate … it’s being aware of everything that’s going on with the group.”

His career is unblemished by any off-ice controversy, though he has been roasted by Islanders fans who felt he abandoned the team — via free agency in July of 2018 — at a time when it was too late for the Isles to try to fill the gap.

Matthews, meanwhile, has been in the spotlight because of allegations of off-ice misconduct — which caught GM Kyle Dubas and team president Brendan Shanahan off guard — and the next Leafs captain, whoever it is, will have to help mend that relationship. By all accounts, finding common ground has been one of Tavares’ strengths.

Leafs winger Mitch Marner agrees, but says Tavares isn’t the only one.

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“We have a lot of guys in our room who could wear that C with the pride and glory that everyone wants,” Leafs winger Mitch Marner said.

Correction, September 30, 2019: This article has been corrected from a previous version that mistakenly said that Johnny Bower passed the Leafs flag to Mats Sundin. In fact, Red Horner passed Sundin the flag.

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