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“You get to decide what you react to. If you let the noise get in the way … can you imagine if every time someone in your life told you that you couldn’t do it, you listened to them? Where would you be?”

He later added: “Things are never as good when you’re winning as you think and never as bad as when you’re losing.”

The Leafs have to play better defence, no question, given that’s what wins in April. But people also got used to Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander — among others — winning games last season off crowd-pleasing goals. While that was going on, winger Leo Komarov held down a third-line wing position and worked under the radar, as did Roman Polak on the third defence pairing.

When the team hasn’t scored at points this season — put veterans such as Patrick Marleau and Nazem Kadri in that group with the snakebitten kids — the likes of Komarov and Polak have been perceived as part of the problem. But they have Babcock’s support.

“We can move guys around if we feel it’s going to help us get better,” Babcock reasoned. “I just think when I look at our last couple of games, I think that we’re in a good situation. I don’t feel like you (media) guys do, not one bit, but when I do, we’ll change some things.”

“I think, the better teams play defensively, the more you shoot to break them down,” he added. “It creates more randomness rather than thinking pretty plays are going to be there. I thought St. Louis did a better job of that, early in the game, than we did.”