It’s the food: breakfast, lunch, a take-home dinner.

It’s the equipment: the right stick, the right curve, the right lie.

It’s the training, with the same staff and treatment that the Toronto Maple Leafs get.

It’s, well, everything. The Toronto Marlies are a minor-league club with a major-league attitude.

“Everything is first class,” Marlies captain Andrew Campbell says. “Everything from hotels and meals to staff.”

The farm team is no longer a place to simply put prospects, which used to be how the Maple Leafs did things. Now the organization is on the leading edge of player development, investing in the growth potential of their young charges.

“From the time I’ve been with the Marlies, it doesn’t feel like an American Hockey League team,” says forward Seth Griffith, who played in the NHL with the Leafs, Bruins and Panthers in the 2016-17 season. “You get treated so well. There’s an unlimited amount of resources. If you need something equipment-wise, they get it for you right away. It makes you feel wanted.”

The shift started when the Leafs moved their top farm team from St. John’s to Toronto for the 2005-06 season, mainly as a cost-saving measure. The commitment from ownership has grown through the years, but it is only in the past couple of seasons that the team has been properly stocked with prospects. That’s led to a couple of playoff runs — Toronto opens a second-round series in Syracuse on Friday — and resulted in a loyal fan base, with the Marlies averaging more than 6,100 a game at the Ricoh Coliseum.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Leafs general manager Lou Lamoriello says. “The thing I was most impressed with when I came here to Toronto was that ownership allowed the hockey department to have a minor-league team with the resources to develop players — which means complementing them with veterans — to help them improve, help them to become competitive every year.

“If you want to be a successful organization in the NHL today, you have to develop players.”

Marlies coach Sheldon Keefe says everything he needs it at his disposal, from staff to player development programs.

“There’s a lot of resources here . . . to create a positive environment in which the players can come to the rink knowing they have everything they need, that they will be well taken care of,” Keefe says. “That in itself has players feeling they’re getting better. They’re not feeling down because they’re in the minors . . . they feel they part of something.”

The players that made the leap to the NHL this year — and an impactful leap at that — have helped the organization’s reputation as a developer of talent. It’s impossible to know where the 2016-17 Leafs would have been if William Nylander, Connor Brown and Zach Hyman had been rushed to the NHL, or if their development had been ignored or neglected.

“When you’re in the same city, there are more eyes on you,” Keefe says. “You feel like you are a part of something. The commitment from the organization has been terrific. It makes our job easier in terms of dealing with the players and having what we need to make them better.”

Surrounding young prospects with good people, both as teammates and in support roles, only makes sense to Lamoriello.

“If you have children, who would you want them studying with? Or going to movies with? Or working out with?” the Leafs GM says. “You want quality people to help them become better, not drag them down.”

It isn’t easy to live off a minor-league salary, especially in a city with expensive housing like Toronto. So to have meals taken care of at home is a big help, something that doesn’t happen with other AHL teams.

“It’s very NHL,” Campbell says. “A lot of NHL teams have meals for the players. There are only a handful of teams in the American league that do it. We’re very fortunate.”

The veterans have heard the nightmares.

“It’s funny seeing some of the rookies, they don’t know how good they’ve got it,” Griffith says. “You hear stories about struggles in The A. Some teams, they don’t have the money so you don’t get your curve. You take somebody else’s stick. You struggle with that.”

Campbell adds to that list.

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“Or they stay at budget hotels, or eat crappy meals. We stay at first-class hotels,” Campbell says.

It might sound like a pampered life, but it goes toward producing a better hockey player. Making the Marlies a top draw for the best veteran AHLers is in turn best for the young Leaf prospects by creating a winning and competitive environment.

“The two go hand in hand,” Campbell says. “If you’re an American league veteran like myself, I can’t think of a better place to be with the way you get treated.”

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