Jake Gardiner had just been introduced to his mini-me — the Jake Gardiner bobble-head doll.

Anatomically correct, by the way: A HUMONGOUS noggin.

(Oh relax. Anatomical refers to any representation of body parts.)

“I’ve seen only a picture of it,” the endlessly perplexing D-man said, before behind handed the toy by a reporter in the Leaf dressing room. “The other guys were joking around that it looks like the actual size of my head. It’s pretty spot on.”

It was Jake Gardiner Bobble Head Doll Night a few blocks away at the Ricoh Centre Saturday night. Which is a pity, because Jake had a pretty dandy night at the Air Canada Centre. But the daddy-club doesn’t do dollies, far as I can recall.

Gardiner was clearly instantly charmed by the disproportionate little fellow. “Awesome,” he cooed. He instantly began bobbing his head up and down, in sync.

It’s a head — the real one, on Gardiner’s shoulders — that has sometimes seemed full of rocks, leading coach Randy Carlyle to pull at the remaining hairs on his melon. “Bobble” can actually take on a whole different context with Gardiner. One never knows which No. 51 will show up on any given night — the rushing rearguard who can take your breath away or the maladroit defenceman who causes havoc in his own end with brain-cramp blunders.

On this evening, against the Canucks, it was decidedly the former, and Gardiner actually just one gem from among a string of bright shiny Leafs, in a 5-2 sparkler of nearly complete domination. Well, if one were to ignore the shots against and the suddenly dud power play and the fluttering heart third period.

The opponent, keep in mind, stands just a tick behind Anaheim in the Western Conference, albeit arriving in Toronto amidst an exhausting seven-game road trip. But still, with Leaf nemesis Ryan Miller — from his former extended tenure as a Sabre – between the pipes. Driven from them, however, after surrendering four goals on a mere 14 shots, Joffrey Lupul’s sixth of the season, perfect shot low off the post and in, ushering Miller to the bench, replaced by Eddie Lack.

It was Gardiner, who so often appears far younger than his 24 years — not very hockey mature as a third-year NHL pro — launching Toronto on an offensive roll, that first goal gaining ever magnifying significance for the Leafs, now 11-0 when scoring first. Actually, the goal was at first awarded to Peter Holland, Gardiner credited with the assist after leading the rush up the right wing and putting a shot low stick side on Miller that was buried on the rebound.

Really, it was entirely Gardiner’s effort on the play and the unassisted lamp-lighter was correctly attributed to him later. “Jake made a great play to throw it on net and off the pad. It’s kind of tough to tell sometimes, it happens so fast. I think I collided with their defenceman’s stick and so I thought I hit the puck originally but I guess he put it in the empty net.”

Unfazed by the claw-back, Holland went on to score what was indisputably his own beauty in the second, ripping it unassisted over Miller’s shoulder at 4:16 after Lupul had kayoed Alex Edler, which opened up a gaping scoring lane, Leafs up 3-0 at that point.

The thing about Gardiner, to return to that subject, is a huge upside that makes it easier to disregard the tangle-footed downside to his game, and the never satisfactorily answered question: Why is this guy a defenceman anyway? Too late in the game to change things up now.

He’s the first to acknowledge his own shortcomings, as mystifying to him as his coaches. “I’m feeling up and down,” he’d said after the morning skate, which has become an optional illusion, no longer mandatory for Leafs to break a sweat-around on game day, the coaching staff acquiescing on this request from the players. (Who’s the boss around here anyway?)

“Sometimes I’m good, sometimes I’m not.”

Which does cut to the bone of Jake’s Thing: When he’s good, he’s very, very good; when he’s bad he’s awful.

“I’m feeling pretty confident, just some lulls in my game,” Gardiner continued. “The other night I fell over a few times. I don’t know what that was about. But, just, certain plays I need to be better at.”

There’s no figuring it, what brings out the best and worst in Gardiner, who can look so poised and controlling of the play when carrying the puck up-ice on a rushing sortie, then eye-gouging ghastly back in his own end on a foolish half-arsed puck-rattle around the boards or clanging turnover.

Often criticized for bullying his whipping boy, Carlyle observed of Gardiner — among the hit leaders last night, with five blocked shots to boot — on Saturday: “The thing about Jake is he’s a skating defenceman. I’d like to see him move the puck more effective, and quicker. Get the puck onto our forwards’ hands and join the rush. Don’t need to lead the rush. Move the puck and join the rush and be strong defensively.

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“When Jake is off his game he’s swinging at the puck and taking too long to move the puck. We want all of our team to play quick.”

Well, maybe Gardiner was listening — and has been listening through this recent spate of Toronto victories, Thursday’s limp effort against New Jersey aside.

And speaking of listening, perhaps Lupul had his ear up against the wall between dressing room and media conference room also, because Carlyle had called out his winger as well.

“Lupes has got to become more of a simplified guy, maybe more of a power winger. In the last game (versus the Devils) specifically, he was guilty as we all were of turning the puck over and trying to play as an individual too many times. When we do that, when he does that, his effectiveness drops.

“We’d like to see him be more of a straight-line shooter, be a guy that can cycle the puck because he is capable of it. Don’t carry the puck up to the blue line, move the puck up, move yourself, move off the puck more.”

A goal and an assist for Lupul.

It’s the mantra Carlyle has been teaching since he got to Toronto. And, frankly, it can make for some rather dull hockey, the cycling game. But that’s perceived as the Leafs’ only path to success, despite that big-talent big-shot first line. Which contributed squat Saturday night on the score sheet.

Fortunately, the secondary scoring was percolating — Richard Panik chipping in his fifth, which is rather impressive for his fourth-line minutes, and David Clarkson into an empty net.

And, of course, there was Jonathan Bernier in the nets. Not as dramatically superb as he was last season, hasn’t stolen a game for the Leafs yet this season, but sharp in the first period when the Canucks came in waves to start and even better in the third when things got somewhat tense, Vancouver drawing within two before stoned on a power play. A sequence of spectacular saves in that two-minute span of pandemonium, when the Leafs were unable to clear the puck.

It was Bernier’s eighth straight start and nobody, Carlyle included, is talking about Toronto’s goaltending tandem of 1(a) and 1(b) anymore. Against the Canucks Bernier faced 46 shots, still ridiculously too high.

That’s his normal, alas.

And the Jake Bobble Head? He tucked one in best buddy Morgan Rielly’s dressing room cubicle too. Because boy Leafs do play with dolls, apparently.

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