“How about personally,” Morgan Rielly, the Maple Leafs’ top defenceman, was asked recently, “would you say you’re a different defenceman today than you were a year ago?”



“I would like to think that I’ve gotten — year after year, you get better, so yeah I would think so. I want to think so,” Rielly responded. “I don’t know — do you think I am?”



It’s easy to forget now that at this point last season, on the eve of the playoffs, Rielly wasn’t even on the Leafs top pair, let alone a fringe contender for the Norris Trophy.



He’s come a long way in his fifth NHL season in Toronto.



“Obviously every year you play you get more of that confidence and more of that sense of where you kind of stack up in the game and he’s certainly, every year, gotten better and better,” teammate James van Riemsdyk said.



A Leafs defenceman has never...