CALGARY—Whenever the Toronto Maple Leafs come west, the games feel like they matter. The Leafs fans out here, the transplants who left the big city to chase oil or mountains or a house with a yard, are loud, boisterous and flood the buildings in Calgary, or Edmonton, or Vancouver. It happens elsewhere too, of course. Vegas, for instance. The places that see the Leafs once a year.

This year, more than usual, the Leafs are carrying the Boston Bruins around with them. This trip usually comes earlier in the season, but by the end of the week there will be 14 Leafs games left before the playoffs. For the second straight year it’s a long wait for the playoffs, and the Bruins are what’s waiting. Only unlike last season, the Leafs still have a chance to finish ahead.

“That’s what we’re looking at when we look at the standings,” said defenceman Morgan Rielly. “We’re right behind them. I mean they’re a good team, they’ve been playing well for a while. So it’s important that we treat these last games like playoff hockey, start preparing for a playoff series, and that’s what we’ve been doing. It’s important that the closer we get to the end of the year, the more playoff-type hockey we start playing.”

That remains a work in progress. For all the idea that this Leafs team dusts bad to mediocre teams and struggles against the best, they were 11-11 against the 10 best non-Toronto teams going into the Calgary game Monday night.

But all season coach Mike Babcock has been asking for consistently heavy hockey, for his version of defensive pressure, which isn’t so much bodychecking as it is skating, and competing like a demon. This Leafs team has flashed it at times — think the latter two periods in St. Louis last month, after being steamrolled in the first period.

And then there was Thursday night on Long Island, surrounded by the ecstatic hateful howl of Islanders fans, where most of the team’s big guns shrank in the noise and emotion, and it looked like nothing less than those calamitous first two playoff games in Boston last spring. The Leafs entered the opener of this three-game Western Canada swing three points behind the Bruins. Some things, from defensive structure to big-game competitive ferocity, occasionally remain a point of contention.

“If you can’t play without (defensive hockey), you’ll go out in the first round of the playoffs every year,” said Babcock. “So, you can have all these great regular-season results, but when there’s no space and no room and the other team is above you and they’re just going to wait for you to turn it over, you’re going to turn it over if you won’t do the same. In the end, you end up disappointed in the spring.

“When you get these life lessons like we got the other night by the Islanders, why not just absorb it and get on and move on so you can play a long time in the spring instead of having an early exit?”

So, on towards Boston. Despite injuries to defencemen Jake Gardiner and Travis Dermott, and to centre Nazem Kadri, Toronto can catch the Bruins. It would require a remarkable run, and for Boston to cool off after their current 16-game point streak. Last year the Leafs spent most of the season trapped in the strange state of suspended animation — too far behind Boston and Tampa to catch them, too good to fall.

And it ended with three lost one-goal leads in the Garden in Game 7. How much of that was the emotion, the crowd, the stage of Boston?

“Part of it,” said Rielly. “Part of it. I mean, that’s what home ice is all about, I think. I mean, I don’t think that’s what broke open the series for them, but there’s definitely an advantage to that. So we’re going to take these points very seriously, and try to get on a roll before we get into the playoffs.”

Vancouver and Edmonton are the kind of teams the Leafs should hypothetically be able to roll; Calgary was a real test. After this one, there are two more games against the heavyweight Tampa Bay Lightning, one trip to Nashville, and the storm-surging Carolina Hurricanes at home the night after another trip to the rabid cauldron of Long Island.

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There aren’t a lot of big games left, emotional games, to help prepare for the stuff they’ve been building up to all year. Last year, Boston finished with the fourth-best record in hockey and Toronto tied for sixth. Going into Monday night, after everything — after adding Tavares, after the development of Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, after trading for Jake Muzzin, after the rise of Kasperi Kapanen and Andreas Johnsson to an already dangerous lineup — “We don’t have enough time to go through the whole litany of the list,” said Calgary coach Bill Peters — the Leafs were fifth in the NHL, with a chance to tie San Jose for fourth with a win against the Flames. Boston was third.

Sixteen games left before the real ones. The games matter, and will matter more. Every marginal advantage needs to be seized, polished, developed, protected. Getting healthy is an obvious thing. Staying healthy, too. And a Game 7 in Toronto should probably be the goal.

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