Bozak, JVR relish another playoff shot with Leafs Pending unrestricted free agents hoping to be part of the deep postseason run that they’ve yet to experience during their time in Toronto, Kristen Shilton writes.

Kristen Shilton TSN Toronto Maple Leafs Reporter Follow|Archive

TORONTO – The Maple Leafs have had enough practice. It’s time to play.

Toronto’s first-round Stanley Cup playoff series against the Boston Bruins begins on Thursday, following three days filled with up-tempo drills, workouts, video sessions, full-team sprints and countless questions about the challenge ahead.

When the puck drops on Game 1, it will mark the first time since 2004 that the Leafs have been postseason participants in consecutive seasons. While a handful of Toronto’s players don’t know their professional careers yet without a playoff berth, the Leafs’ longest-tenured skaters are aware of how rare these chances are – and relish them accordingly.

“I’ve been through it all – not making the playoffs for quite a while, seeing how hard it actually is to put a team together and then getting into the playoffs at all is tough,” said nine-year veteran Tyler Bozak. “It’s the best; it’s why you play is to get into the postseason. Anything can happen once you’re in. Hopefully now we get to experience how tough it is to go deep into the playoffs. That’s the goal. That’s the next thing on the list.”

Bozak has seen the postseason twice before with Toronto, failing to make it out of the first round. His initial shot was in the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season, when Toronto suffered an infamous Game 7-collapse to fall 5-4 in overtime to the Bruins. The second berth was last spring, with the Leafs’ squeaking in as the eighth seed and losing to the Washington Capitals in six games.

At 32 and with unrestricted free agency pending this summer, Bozak isn’t taking this chance he and the Leafs have for granted. His next step may not be decided for months, and this lineup has as good a chance as any Bozak has ever been part of to make some noise in the postseason. Not only did the Leafs set a franchise-record for wins (49) in the regular season, their depth is unmatched by any roster Toronto has iced since Bozak arrived.

“We feel good, we feel confident and I think that’s the main thing,” said Bozak. “We worked on what we needed to do, worked all season to be where we are now and play the type of game we want to play. We just have to use what we did all year and try to get better every day and hopefully it all works out for us.”

Bozak’s long-time linemate and nine-year veteran James van Riemsdyk has also been waiting for waiting for a sustained run with the Leafs. He started his career on a playoff high, going to the Stanley Cup Final with the Philadelphia Flyers as a rookie in 2009 and making the postseason each year until being traded to Toronto in 2012.

Still, van Riemsdyk hasn’t been to the second round of a series since 2011. Like Bozak, he’s also a pending unrestricted free agent with his future in flux.

“The longer you play, the more you realize how hard it is to win [a single game] in the playoffs and then actually make a run too,” said van Riemsdyk. “You realize there are a lot of different factors that go into that, so you can only focus on one day at a time. For us to get a chance to earn our way in is great. We have a nice challenge, a nice opportunity in front of us, and we’re excited to see what we can do with it.”

Citing experience earned by the Leafs last spring, van Riemsdyk said the biggest difference now is confidence in how far the team has come. While nowhere near satisfied, van Riemsdyk can’t help but smile recounting Toronto’s big-picture journey to back-to-back playoff berths.

“You see the way the team has evolved over the years to what we have now, it’s exciting,” he said. “We have some depth pretty much everywhere in the lineup and that makes it fun as a player and it makes it tough for our opponents…to match up when you have different guys that can chip in on any given night.”

Should the Leafs find success against Boston and beyond, van Riemsdyk’s regular-season stats suggest he’ll play a key part. His team-high 36 goals were a career best, and van Riemsdyk’s work on the Leafs’ top power-play unit made it one of the league’s best over the final two months of the regular season (van Riemsdyk himself has tallied four goals and seven points on the power play since Feb. 1).

Those numbers are all well and good to Leafs coach Mike Babcock, but skill will only carry Toronto so far in their second season. To reach their loftiest expectations, the Leafs will have to pair that skill with considerable intensity.

“Without will and determination and grit, [skill] doesn’t much matter,” said Babcock. “You tend to see players go away at playoff time that you’re expecting or hoping for more from, and if they don’t compete at a high enough level, it doesn’t matter. You’ll end up playing against the same [players] night in, night out. In the end, it comes back to being competitive.”​