Going Up, Going Down

Viktor Stalberg needed a kick in the butt. Or so it looked.

So he's back down in the minors, and Jiri Tlusty is up. Again. One more time.

There's three possible reasons why Stalberg hasn't been nearly as effective in the regular season as he was in the pre-season.

One, exhibition hockey isn't anywhere close to regular season hockey, and Stalberg isn't good enough to be an NHL regular, at least not yet.

Two, he got self-satisfied and figured all the hard work was done once he'd earned an NHL roster spot.

Or three, getting rocked by Ottawa's Anton Volchenkov in the third game of the season and suffering a concussion has left the young Swede unable to perform at the same level he showed in September.

My guess is No. 2, but all three are plausible.

Assuming Stalberg isn't still dinged, this is in general a very good way in which to deal with young players who are dealing with the inconsistencies that come with youth. It probably would have helped Nikolai Kulemin last year. It might still help Luke Schenn this year.

But the Leafs have to somehow get rid of the perception that having youngsters go up and down between the NHL and AHL is somehow demeaning to those players, or punishment.

It's called player development. Look at how well Darren Helm played for the Red Wings last year in the playoffs after spending most of the year in the minors. Moreover, you want your kids to be hungry to stay in the NHL, not complacent.

Which brings us to Tlusty. Uppermost in the minds of Leaf management is trying to understand why Tlusty is so effective in the AHL - six goals in eight games this season - yet a shadow of that player against NHL competition.

The belief here is that he might not be a good enough skater, and therefore simply unable to get to the places he needs to get to in order to be an effective offensive player.

The Leafs front office and coaching staff, however, don't believe that. They seem to think Tlusty is good enough, but for some reason gets freaked out by the bright lights of the ACC. The concern internally is that if they can't get to the root of this, a very talented player will end up in Carolina or Phoenix or L.A. and flourish there, away from the media and fan pressures of Toronto.

They're hoping the Lee Stempniak treatment will work on Tlusty. Basically, with Stempniak, the club has showered praise upon him for his work ethic and effort and conditioning and repeatedly told the veteran winger they believe that he can get back to the level when he was a consistent scorer in the NHL.

Even when the points weren't coming early, the message was the same. Now, the points are starting to come and Stempniak, for the most part, has been the club's best forward.

So that's the plan with Tlusty. Make him feel the organization believes in him and hope that rids him of the yips.

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Troubling Times in Anaheim

ANAHEIM

The Maple Leafs, quite obviously, were a lot more concerned with getting their first victory of the season than helping sell hockey in southern California.

But as the boos rained down on the hometown Ducks last night at a half-empty Honda Centre after a 6-3 defeat at the hands of the visiting Leafs, it was certainly time to take notice on the impact the recession and a variety of other issues have had on the Anaheim franchise.

At one point, the Ducks had sold out 78 straight games, including the entire 2007-08 season that followed their Stanley Cup triumph over the Ottawa Senators. That streak ended early last season, and since then there’s been a decline in attendance at Anaheim home games, although the Ducks still boast a strong season ticket base of 11,500.

The recession hasn’t helped any of the U.S. teams, particularly those in the southern states. Second, as many markets have shown, in three-quarters of the NHL’s American cities the fans don’t come unless the home team is winning.

Right now, the Ducks are one of the worst teams in the league after off-loading great chunks of contractual commitments and experience over the past year.

Thirdly, the competition in this market is ferocious these days. As the Ducks started their season, they were going up against USC football, playoff baseball teams in Los Angeles and Anaheim, and the opening of training camp for the defending NBA champion Lakers. Having the nearby L.A. Kings get off to a strong start isn’t helping.

When Brian Burke ran the Ducks, he established a team personality in which Anaheim bullied as many teams as possible, killed off tons of penalties and scored just enough to win. These days, the Ducks aren’t quite as tough without Chris Pronger on the blueline, and as they showed last night in giving the Leafs 11 power plays and five power play goals, they aren’t quite as effective killing off the penalties.

“It hasn’t been an issue up until tonight,” said Anaheim coach Randy Carlyle afterwards. “The frustration level goes with the lack of success we’ve been having. When you start to see players like Saku Koivu and Scott Niedermayer in reaction mode, then you start to question if we are putting ourselves in a can’t-win situation. Was our attitude and frustration getting the better part of us? I’d have had to say yes in some of those instances.”

Including a loss to Columbus on Saturday night, the Ducks have surrendered 12 goals in their last two home games and are one point out of dead last in the west. It wasn’t that long ago that the Ducks were drawing crowds of less than 10,000, and even winning the Cup hasn’t made this market any less vulnerable to competition, economic downturns or losing.

The Leafs, needless to say, weren’t too bothered about the boos or the size of the crowd. Afterwards, head coach Ron Wilson praised rookie goalie Jonas Gustavsson for making some significant stops early, including one splendid stop on Erik Christenson just six minutes in with the game scoreless.

“That one, at the time, I thought, ‘Here we go, they’re up one nothing just like that.’ But he found a way to make the save,” said Wilson.

Gustavsson made 25 saves to secure his first NHL win.

“For the team, it was big to get the first win,” he said. “Everybody can stop talking about it and move on and try to get the next one. For myself, it was a big step for me to get my first NHL win. I’m really happy about it.”

He said he’s still adjusting to the North American game.

“You have to be ready all the time for shots, shots from everywhere, and it feels like the shots are coming from closer here than in Sweden,” he said.

The Leafs pelted Jonas Hiller with 39 shots, many of them during power plays.

Lee Stempniak played more than 22 minutes to lead all Leaf forwards, while Luke Schenn’s ice time continued to shrink, down to 10:03 last night.

Niklas Hagman had seven shots on goal and scored three times.

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SpinPlus Video: Leafs practice in Vancouver

Call For Character

It's pretty simple. If the Maple Leafs have any character, it will show itself tonight at the Air Canada Centre.

The 2009-10 season has begun in nightmarish fashion for Ron Wilson's team, and all the coach's wisecracks and media baiting can't change the facts.

Winless in five, backstopped by a goalie who now has an .812 save percentage and a 5.56 goals against average and clearly the NHL's worst defensive team on merit, the Leafs have sunk to a shocking low already this season.

Last night's loss in New York might have been their worse yet. Tonight it's apparently improved Colorado in town, and really a last chance for a host of Leaf veterans to demonstrate whether they care enough to turn this thing around, or have the will to do so. If they can't, there will be changes, if only because GM Brian Burke has lots of time to make 'em.

After tonight, you see, the Leafs have only one game for the next 11 days, a bizarro break in the schedule, particularly in an Olympic season which is supposed to compress the schedule for everyone.

They get the Rangers at home on Saturday, then don't play again until the following Saturday when they begin a road trip in Vancouver. By then, rookie goalie Jonas Gustavsson should be back, but it's a little early to start depending on The Monster.

The Leafs, right now, look like a team desperate for a leader, desperate for somebody to point the way. Clearly, it's not Wilson at this moment, a coach who has proven completely unable to get this club to play anything resembling big-league defence over the past 14 months. It's fine that he regards anyone holding a pen or a microphone as a complete moron, but it's an approach that doesn't sell nearly as well when you're dead last in the standings.

Given that the team does not own a proven NHL starting goaltender, the need for quality defensive play is greater now than at any time previously during Wilson's reign. Yet the club ran around at Madison Square Garden last night even worse than they did at home to Pittsburgh on Saturday.

It would be a shocker if Burke pulled the plug on Wilson, and don't bet on it. But coaches do get canned after starts like this. It happens.

Here's one from the fantasy department for you. Imagine if Burke axed Wilson and turned to ex-Phoenix coach Wayne Gretzky to coach the Leafs.

Would Gretzky do it? Could he possibly turn it down?

Now that would be a shakeup.

But again, that's pure fantasy, not even worthy of being called speculation. Try idle chatter.

Burke could do any number of things if the Leafs can't beat Colorado tonight.

Waive Vesa Toskala. Send Luke Schenn to the minors for seasoning (is everybody understanding more clearly now why I was so set against keeping this kid in the NHL last season?). Demote Jason Blake. Recall Tyler Bozak.

None of these moves would solve a whole lot. It would be more like shock therapy, moves designed to jolt the rest of the roster or clear cap space. But suggesting it's still early with no reason to make significant moves is ignoring the reality that this is not a problem that is five games old. It's 87 games old, the length of the Wilson coaching reign, the time span in which the problems with this club have become obvious yet mostly gone unfixed.

If the Leafs don't win tonight, Burke will have to do something. With all the optimism of training camp gone, he's quickly becoming a man on the hot seat.

Bad Blood

The NHL has dealt with the tampering allegations between the Vancouver Canucks and Maple Leafs and it's a closed matter, right?

Sort of.

Left unresolved, it's fair to say, is the bad blood between the two clubs, a very personal dislike that seems likely to resurface again.

Did the Leafs tamper with the Sedins? Of course, not, at least not any more than any NHL club tampers with players who will be free agents. Teams talk to the agents, get a sense of what the players want or don't want, and sometimes it develops into a signing down the line.

Is that tampering? In theory, yes. But it happens all the time. Clearly, if the Leafs tampered with the Sedins, they didn't do it successfully. Leaf GM Brian Burke flew all the way to Sweden hoping to put in a face-to-face bid with the twins only to find they were already signed to new contracts by the Canucks.

If that was tampering, it didn't work.

And the TV stuff? Annoying, but hardly actionable.

What's below the surface here, however, matters, and that is that Canucks GM Mike Gillis is despised by the Leaf management team, specifically, Burke and Dave Nonis.

Nonis feels, rightly or wrongly, that Gillis stole his job in Vancouver by underhanded means.

In fact, Nonis would probably argue that Gillis "tampered" with the Canucks owners, finally convincing them he could do a better job running their team than Nonis.

Burke, meanwhile, is Nonis' buddy. He's told Gillis personally that he believes Gillis submarined Nonis by chatting up the Aquilini family.

So this, really, is personal. Now, after the tampering charges, its professional as well. How will it play out? Well, dislike between teams in the NHL these days often is expressed through offer sheets to restricted free agents.

Both teams better watch out.

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