Maple Leafs lose first game of Brendan Shanahan era, but Toronto's new boss focused on bigger things

TORONTO — Brendan Shanahan will tell you he doesn’t remember his first NHL game as much as his second. The first was a blur. The second was in Toronto, his hometown. Here he was, an 18-year-old kid. On Friday night, he slipped away from the New Jersey Devils and met his buddies at a high school dance. On Saturday night, he sat on the bench, heard his line called, watched his teammates coming off – and realized he was about to step onto the ice at Maple Leaf Gardens.

“This,” he thought, “is real.”

So imagine how he felt about the NHL 2014-15 season opener on Wednesday night. Here he was, a 45-year-old man, the new president of the Toronto Maple Leafs. At Yonge-Dundas Square, thousands gathered to see old Leafs like Wendel Clark, listen to The Tragically Hip and watch the game on big screens. At Air Canada Centre, the 48th Highlanders marched, banging their drums, blowing their bagpipes. A video montage celebrated Toronto as the “Center of the Hockey Universe.” The fans sang “O Canada,” and then the Leafs started their 98th season with a deflating 4-3 loss when the Montreal Canadiens scored with 42.9 seconds to go.

This is real.

This is on his shoulders now – the passion, the pressure. This is his job – to reshape a rich, proud franchise that has missed the playoffs eight of the last nine years and hasn’t won the Stanley Cup since 1967, two years before he was born. He has every resource and no excuse. Now that the puck has dropped, the focus will shift from his resume to his record. No one will cut him slack because he’s a local from Mimico. No one will let him rest on his Hall of Fame laurels. This won’t be a hometown-boy-makes-good story unless, well, the hometown boy makes good. And he knows it.

Shanahan understands the challenge and accepts it, and he has been smart about how he has handled it so far – not saying too much, not giving timelines, making moves methodically, trying to improve incrementally. When Brian Burke took over the Leafs in November 2008, he made bold statements about how he wanted the Leafs to play and how quickly he wanted to turn them around. It backfired. He broadcasted his plans to the competition, and he gave measuring sticks to the critics to use against him later. Shanahan learned from that. He hasn’t tried to win the press conference.

“I think the best way to speak to our fans,” Shanahan said, “is with the way we play.”

When he was introduced in April, Shanahan did not outline his vision. He didn’t clean house, either, even though he knew it would have been popular. He kept general manager Dave Nonis. They ended up keeping coach Randy Carlyle because they didn’t like the other options at the time. The worry was that nothing had changed and nothing would change. But the Leafs did fire Carlyle’s assistants, and Shanahan did do his homework. He knew what he didn’t know.

“I’ve talked to him a few times,” said goaltender Jonathan Bernier. “He knows how to talk to guys, and he’s not on the panic button. Usually a guy like that would come in and just throw a bomb on the team and try to change everything. I think he just wanted to get a feel of the team. He got there at the end of the season.”

By late July, Shanahan dismissed executives Claude Loiselle and Dave Poulin. He hired a young assistant GM known for his focus on analytics, Kyle Dubas. He spent the previously unspent analytics budget on an analytics department that includes a website designer and a blogger. Now look: The Leafs have a front office with people from different backgrounds – old school, new school – who can debate and bat around ideas.

“I like our staff,” Shanahan said. “I like the way that we’re built. I like the dynamics that they consider when they’re in a room talking with each other. Certainly we feel that there’s a way that we need to play. I think there’s probably a lot of teams that are trying to play similar. At the end of the day, we want to be successful.”

What is the way the Leafs need to play?

“Well, I’m not going to give you everything,” he said, smiling.

Generally?

“Well, generally speaking, I think that the puck is something that we have to own a little bit more,” he said. “There are teams that are built different ways to own the puck and have the puck. That’s the key to the hockey game.”

That’s the key to all of this. The Leafs have been a poor possession team. It caught up to them last season when they collapsed and missed the playoffs, and it is where they need to improve the most. Shanahan did not come to Toronto to be the GM or the coach, but he came to Toronto to set the course for the GM and the coach, to work with the GM and the coach and ultimately to evaluate the GM and the coach. Already we have seen an evolution: changes to the system, veteran enforcers waived to make room for young skilled players because the young skilled players give the Leafs the best chance to win. But it’s going to take time. Let’s see how Nonis adapts. Let’s see how Carlyle adapts. Let’s see how the players adapt.

“The last words I said to the players: ‘It’s up to you,’ ” Carlyle said. “They’ve agreed with a lot of the things that we’ve tried to implement over the course of training camp, and now it’s time for us to demonstrate the will and the skill and the work ethic that’s going to be required to have success in the NHL.”

Let’s see how Shanahan adapts, too. He still has a lot to learn himself about this team and this job. This is real, but this is just the beginning.

“He wants to change the culture,” Bernier said. “He knows it’s not going to be an overnight thing, but I think he’ll do it the right way.”