Maple Leafs Showed Some Fight. Now Show It Earlier

There's something enjoyable about watching a hockey team fight its way back into a game it probably shouldn't have been in. The crowd gets going, the players find another gear, and for a few minutes, anything seems possible.

The Toronto Maple Leafs gave us some of that against the Utah Mammoth on Tuesday night. They fell behind 5-2, pushed back in the third period, scored twice, and made things interesting right to the end. They didn't quit, and that matters. But there's a catch.

Where was the Maple Leafs’ urgency in the first two periods?

The Maple Leafs had spent much of the night chasing Utah. They gave up five goals, struggled to contain the Mammoth's speed, and made the sort of mistakes that turn a difficult road game into an uphill climb. Then, with the game slipping away, they found another gear. That’s good, but only to a point.

Jack Roslovic said something after the game that stuck with me. The Maple Leafs played with more urgency in the third period, he noted, but they have to manufacture that same urgency when the score is 0-0. He's right. It's easy to get motivated when the situation becomes desperate. Everybody knows what's at stake. There's no time left to waste, and every shift feels important. The trick is bringing that same commitment before the game gets away from you.

The Maple Leafs can't wait until they're in trouble to respond.

I think there's a lesson in that for just about anybody. We sometimes do our best work when we're backed into a corner. The deadline is approaching, the problem has become impossible to ignore, or somebody finally tells us enough is enough. But wouldn't it be better if we didn't need the crisis?

The Maple Leafs deserve some credit for pushing back against Utah. They could have folded after a rough second period. Instead, they made a game of it and gave themselves a chance. That's a positive. A team needs resilience, especially over an 82-game season when things won't always go its way. But resilience can become a crutch if a team keeps relying on it to cover up slow starts and careless play.

Getting the Maple Leafs started on time is an issue.

Jim Hiller is trying to establish a new standard in Toronto. That means learning from the good parts of a game without overlooking the bad ones. The comeback was encouraging. Nobody needs to take that away from the players.

Now comes the harder part: showing that same fight from the opening faceoff, when the score is still 0-0, and there's no emergency to respond to. That's when the Maple Leafs will really start to make progress.