Toronto Maple Leafs: The Marlies Can Handle Adversity

This sentence is required to include mention of the Toronto Maple Leafs in order to please the SEO lords. I’m not happy about it. But here we are.

In their capacity as a team, the Toronto Marlies are a relative stranger to adversity. It’s not difficult to see why.

In its most basic form, adversity is a byproduct – one typically born from prolonged exposure to futility, something the Marlies have largely managed to avoid. If losing is the disease, this team vaccinated themselves long ago.

Just look at their results.

Under the sole stewardship of Kyle Dubas, an era beginning prior to the 2014-15 season and ultimately concluding upon the 32-year-old’s promotion to the Leafs’ post this past May, the Marlies put forth a staggering cumulative record of 190-90-20-4.

In fact, mere win-loss totals actually do their success an injustice.

Twice did the Dubas Marlies finish atop the AHL standings in points. And twice did they suffer the fewest losses in the league as well. Save for Dubas’ first year at the helm, his iteration of the Marlies continually found ways to strike the perfect balance between offensive prowess and defensive fortitude, with their full-season goal differential refusing to ever dip below +34.

They were good. Good enough, at least, to consistently duck the adversity which typically befalls an average team, even in the face of personnel loss, depth depletion, and injury.

These Marlies, however, are far less fortunate.

Adversity has now become all too prevalent this season, permeating the locker room as one of 2018-19’s most frequently recurring themes.

Yesterday afternoon’s overtime loss to the Cleveland Monsters exemplifies this perfectly.

Not only did the Marlies forfeit a crucial two points to a divisional rival – points which may very well rear back to bite them when reaching the season’s latter stretch. Sunday’s result further managed to drop the Marlies’ record to an underwhelming 7-7-2-2 through the season’s first 18 games and, admittedly, came about in heartbreaking fashion.

It was precisely the type of defeat this team had managed to evade for so long.

And if we’re talking adversity, which we are, Eamon McAdam shouldered the brunt of it.

Carrying a 24-save shutout into the third period’s two-minute drill, the 25-year-old was in the midst of the best performance of his young Marlies career. And, this particular Twitter account aside, few could have foreseen this. McAdam’s sudden rise up the organizational depth chart has been equal parts welcome and thoroughly unexpected.

It wasn’t too long ago that the centrepiece of the offseason’s Matt Martin trade dutifully tended goal for the Newfoundland Growlers, beginning his initial spin inside the Leafs organization in the ECHL. Frankly, that’s where most had pegged him to stay.

A sudden and fleeting injury to Frederik Andersen is what earned McAdam his emergency NHL call-up on October 15th and sent him to Toronto. The Marlies’ sheer ineptitude in goal, however, necessitated that he stay.

McAdam has not merely stuck around in the weeks since his arrival. Actually, Sunday’s contest served as his third consecutive start for the Marlies – playing time McAdam rightfully earned from having been, by a wide margin, his team’s most consistent option in net thus far.

So, there McAdam was. Achingly close to his first career AHL shutout and almost certainly supplanting Kasimir Kaskisuo from the role of Marlies’ starter. 120 seconds were all that remained.

That’s exactly when adversity struck. And it struck fast.

Carl Grundstrom, in his typical bull-in-a-china-shop fashion, burst into the offensive zone late in the game with his sights set clearly on an open path to the net. As he charged ahead, Grundstrom’s trajectory was stopped only when Monsters’ defender, Tommy Cross, proceeded to hook him to the ice.

Standing no more than 5 feet from the altercation, the official declined to intervene.

To be fair, putting the whistles away when it comes to routine infractions is a normal form of referee practice in tight games. You can’t fault them for turning a blind eye initially.

It wasn’t until Grundstrom had pulled himself up only to then be checked back down to the ice by Cross once again, however, with the puck now nowhere in sight, that a lack of action crossed the threshold from reluctant acceptance into inexcusable.

Of course, the Monsters went back the other way to score, tying the game at 1. And of course, minutes into the ensuing overtime, they beat McAdam five-hole to win it.

So often this season, it seems, have the Marlies’ been withheld their rightful outcome.

Sunday was no different.

“Last year we had a really, really good team,” explained Mason Marchment, the Marlies’ lone goal scorer of the afternoon, to reporters post-game.

“A lot of solid vets. And this year we do too. I just think it’s more about confidence and everyone getting on the same page and keep on rolling. In the third there we had a great period.” 

That very well may be the case.

Perhaps it’s all bad luck. Perhaps it’s injuries. Perhaps, even, this is the price teams must pay for four years of near-uninterrupted dominance. Whatever the cause, this Marlies season, in its current form, will be defined by one notion; the collective ability to soldier on.

And for this team, whose success in recent memory has known no bounds, their young core appears largely well-equipped to handle some bumps on the road.

Timothy Liljegren lost practically his entire draft year to mononucleosis in 2017-18 and saw his draft stock plummet from that of a projected top-2 pick all the way down to where the Leafs eventually took him at 17th. Liljegren, only 19-years-old, is now a staple of the Marlies’ top-4.

Last season, Jeremy Bracco was forced grapple with life as a spare part. In a staunch alternative to his time on Windsor’s Memorial Cup winning team the year prior, Bracco, now a pro, sat for all but 4 games en route to the Marlies’ Calder Cup victory and nevertheless remained his team’s most vocal supporter.

Then there’s Marchment – the undrafted winger who meticulously worked his way up every organizational rung over the course of three seasons and ultimately transformed his game to the point where he currently rests on the precipice of an NHL tryout.

Or Adam Brooks– passed over in his draft year and held goalless as a rookie until this past New Years Eve, who miraculously emerged to lead a Marlies’ fourth line which proved crucial to their postseason ascent.

Or Pierre Engvall – who refused to allow an injury suffered last year in Sweden, along with the months-long layoff, deter his decision to join the Marlies for the stretch run and earn himself an ELC in the process.

Or, or, or. The list goes on and on.

Nearly every young piece in the Marlies’ possession has endured an individual hardship of some kind. And for a team who happens to collectively suffer from a particularly potent case of it, this may be a blessing in disguise.

Thanks for reading!

All stats and information courtesy of hockeydb.com