Quick Shifts: How Senators can trigger nightmare for Maple Leafs

A quick mix of the things we gleaned from the week of hockey, serious and less so, and rolling four lines deep. This is your favourite team’s year.

1. My pal Sam McKee invited me into the Real Kyper & Bourne studio for a full hour Thursday to preview the Battle of Ontario. Fun to further hype the already-well-hyped Maple Leafs–Senators showdown with McKee and Justin Bourne. (Despite pinch-hitting for Nick Kypreos, this was not an official callup. Sadly, I did not get Kyper’s day rate.)

Sammy posed a wonderfully devilish question: What would be the nightmare Round 1 scenario for Toronto?

Justin supplied the best answer: The Senators could detonate the core, once and for all.

The Leafs are already skating with bundles of TNT strapped around their ankles this spring. All the wily Sens need to do is press down on the dynamite blaster.

Surely, a first-round exit for the No. 1 seed and a more talented, more experienced and deeper Ontario team — a 1-9 post-season series record — would be the final blow.

Mitch Marner wouldn’t come back. Maybe they’d move on from John Tavares, too. President Brendan Shanahan might be happy to relocate. Fire up the Morgan Rielly trade rumours.

Think about it: The Sens could break the Leafs.

What’s crazy is there is intra-provincial precedent here — and Leafs GM Brad Treliving lived that nightmare.

In the aftermath of the Edmonton Oilers’ 4-1 defeat of Treliving’s Calgary Flames in the second round of the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs, Elliotte Friedman reported a vindictive rallying cry from within Oilers HQ.

The Oilers knew if they eliminated their bitter rival in convincing fashion, the Flames would never be the same. They leaned into that for inspiration.

They squeezed the trigger.

Sure enough, Treliving traded heartbeat Matthew Tkachuk to Florida a few weeks later.

Centrepiece Sean Monahan was dealt (with draft pick sweeteners!) to Montreal for nothing.

Prized pending free agent Johnny Gaudreau bolted to Columbus, despite Treliving’s best pitch.

The Oilers ignited a summer of upheaval a short drive south, and it wouldn’t be all that much longer before coach Darryl Sutter, stars Jacob Markstrom and Elias Lindholm, and Treliving himself relocated.

Now, imagine you’re Travis Green or Brady Tkachuk: Do you preach the possibility of ruining the Leafs as extra motivation?

That’s some next-level spite.

But what went down in Alberta three springs ago planted a seed.

All that said, I do believe the Maple Leafs take care of business.

They are the better team, right?

2. First-round picks, quick verse
Haiku previews, you’re busy
Please don’t keep receipts …

MVP goalie
Finally figures it out
Winnipeg in five.

Big D without its
Biggest D and no Robo?!
Avs win in seven.

Rod the Bod always
Hoists his players past Round 1
Canes whisk by in six.

Yours to discover
Meet Playoff Brady Tkachuk
Leafs need all seven.

Marc-Andre Fleury
We will miss you, sweet Flower
Golden Knights in six.

Habs back in the dance
Sing, “Olé, olé, olé!”
Capitals in five.

Mattias Ekholm’s
Ghost looms too large for Skinner
Kings take Game 7.

Extra hockey takes
A toll on the champions
Lightning in seven.

3. Some wonky quirks to the playoff schedule.

The Colorado Avalanche — who were able to rest their stars anyway and will become a feel-good favourite the second Gabriel Landeskog’s blades touch the ice — have been given five days off before Game 1 in Dallas on Saturday. (The Stars only got two days between games.)

And with the Battle of Florida not beginning until Tuesday night, four series will have wrapped two games before the Lightning and Panthers begin their first.

Tampa will get four days’ rest. Banged-up Florida gets six. Both sides should come out ablaze.

4. Quote of the Week.

“There’s no one like him … well, his brother.” —Aleksander Barkov on Matthew Tkachuk, who will suit up for Game 1.

5. The Painfully Close Award goes to the Columbus Blue Jackets, who exceeded all outside expectations and wrapped the regular season as the hottest team in hockey.

Sadly, even a six-game win streak, in which third-string goalie Jet Greaves stood on his head and the Jackets outscored opponents 28-6, wasn’t enough.

Montreal secured the East’s final wild-card spot with a minus-20 goal differential; Columbus came up short with a plus-5.

How’s this for a bittersweet conclusion?

Adam Fantilli flew back home to Toronto and buried his grandfather before the Jackets’ penultimate game Tuesday, when he went out and scored his 30th of the season in a win over the Flyers at Wells Fargo Center.

The goal, which bounced off his skate, looked like a fluke.

Nah, it was a gift from Grandpa.

“His favourite team was Philly,” Fantilli said. “It’s going to sound like I’m joking when I say that, but I swear his favourite team was Philly. And coming back, I’m pretty sure that one was him just giving me a lucky bounce there.”

6. Of the hundreds of NHLers I’ve spoken with over the years, Matt Martin is one of the most honest, appreciative, and down-to-earth.

The career fourth-liner trended toward the fifth line this season, appearing in just 32 games for his beloved Islanders and averaging a career-low 8:33 in ice time. Martin will turn 36 next month.

This was the fifth-rounder’s 16th pro season.

He’s only 13 games away from a silver stick, but he’ll soon be an unrestricted free agent. (Another beauty, Kevin Shattenkirk, hung ’em up this winter, stuck at 952 games played.)

This may be the end of the road for Martin, who played the game the hard way and made the most of his gifts and opportunity.

One of the good ones.

So, this interview before what may be his final twirl on the Island is heartbreaking and beautiful:

7. Completely meaningless in terms of standings and stats, this week’s Kings-Oilers game was integral to ramping the hate.

“I think they just have their B squad in trying to hurt us,” Phillip Danault told the intermission host in the wake of Darnell Nurse’s tone-setting, egregious cross-check of Quinton Byfield’s head into the ice.

Nurse was suspended for one meaningless game and probably appreciated the rest. That felt like a soft decision by the Department of Player Safety, which chose not to actually punish Nurse and the Oilers, who made a big stink over Connor McDavid’s suspension earlier this season.

By DoPS math, McDavid’s cross-check was three times worse than Nurse’s. That’s a head-scratcher.

Byfield smartly chose not to pour gasoline on the fire, but Edmonton’s return to L.A. will be must-see television.

8. Some interesting results from the annual NHLPA Player Poll.

The ageless Sidney Crosby finished first in peer voting for “most complete player” for the sixth season. He also topped everyone as “smartest overall player” and was voted the most likely to win an important faceoff. He finished fourth in the “best forward” and fifth in the “best playmaker” categories.

“Those are the guys that you compete against every night,” Crosby acknowledged. “That’s one of the best compliments you can have, is from the people that you compete against every night. So, that means a lot.”

Outside of Boston’s David Pastrnak, who is nine years younger, Crosby was the only player who finished top-10 in scoring and did not qualify for the playoffs.

So incredible, so wasteful.

Penguins GM Kyle Dubas is picking Canada’s world championship roster. Crosby said he wants to think about the opportunity before he commits.

9. Two players scored more goals this season than Tage Thompson, and neither of them (Leon Draisaitl and William Nylander) are American.

Reflecting in the Buffalo Sabres dressing-room stall as his 44-goal campaign wrapped, Thompson said “it stings” not to be selected for his country’s 4 Nations squad. (He was on emergency notice once Team USA’s injuries mounted.)

“I wanted to be on that team,” said Thompson, whose priority was leading Buffalo.

And yet …

“You kind of have that in the back of your mind — that you weren’t selected. And you want to make an impact, a statement. I kind of approached every game with that attitude,” Thompson said.

The 27-year-old has turned his sights on Milano Cortina 2026.

“That’d be an awesome thing to be selected for, and something that’s definitely a goal of mine. I’d be lying if I say I wasn’t thinking about it quite a bit,” Thompson said.

“I’m going to worlds after the season’s over, and that’ll be another good stepping stone to build off a decent year and grow that confidence and round out my game. And anytime you throw on that USA jersey, it’s a huge honour. So, to be able to go over there and compete for something will be exciting.”

Just because USA Hockey snubbed Thompson doesn’t mean he’ll snub them back. A world junior gold medallist, Thompson has two bronze medals from the senior tournament (2018, 2021) but hasn’t made the trip in four years.

“Anytime someone asks you to come represent your country, regardless of the situation, I take that as a huge honour,” he said. “You never really want to turn down those opportunities. You don’t know how many of those you’re going to get.

“Granted, it’s because we’re not in playoffs — and that sucks. But at the same time, you get to go over (to Sweden and Denmark) and play against a lot of great players and play in some meaningful hockey games. You have a chance to win something.”

Love that attitude.

10. It was late January — which, it turns out, was too late — when the Sabres held a brutally honest team meeting.

The youngest team in the NHL finished yet another lottery campaign on a respectable 18-13-2 run that captain Rasmus Dahlin credits to that meeting, which began to flip a mindset.

“We’re finding a new type of game, I would say,” Dahlin said. “We’re playing the right way now. We’re not playing this young, immature hockey anymore. We’re doing the right things, and we’re getting better. I would say the last 30 games we’ve taken steps.”

What does the right way look like?

“Boring,” the dynamic 25-year-old replied. “Boring stuff out there. Dump the puck in. Don’t force stuff; don’t try to make plays always. Stay on the right side. Don’t cheat. Stuff like that you have to learn, and it takes years for young guys to find that type of game.”

Dahlin believes it takes a while for graduates of junior hockey to wrap their brains around the brand of hockey that leads to NHL wins.

Growing pains.

“You have to (expletive) up,” he said. “You have to do all that stuff to learn from it. And it takes time.”

Thompson does feel encouraged by the results that followed the stricter game plan that Lindy Ruff put in motion. By closing out some close games, the group’s confidence grew.

“Confidence is big, especially for a young group like ourselves,” Thompson said. “Just learning that, not getting bored playing the right way, you will get results, and not trying to change it when things aren’t going your way.”

So, will this late-season realization be carried through summer training and set the woeful Sabres up for a strong start in 2025-26? Will that be the case?

“Better be,” Dahlin said.

Gulp.

11. Once Jakub Chychrun re-upped in Washington, I had Winnipeg’s Neal Pionk slotted as the second-most valuable pending UFA defenceman (behind only Florida’s Aaron Ekblad).

Like it or not, in a marketplace thin on available top-four defencemen and about to undergo an accelerated spike in cap space, $7 million per season for Pionk is good value.

Another tidy bit of business by Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff, who has managed to retain plenty of soon-to-be free agents in a small, cold, budget-conscious market without going overboard on signing bonuses and no-move clauses.

Pionk was worth every penny in his contract season, ranking second to Josh Morrissey in ice time (22:03 minutes) and third in plus/minus (plus-21) while tying his career high of 10 goals despite injury.

Had Cheveldayoff let him walk, another team would’ve snatched up the righty for a similar price.

12. Happy retirement, Patrick Maroon.

“Patty’s a winner,” said Craig Berube, who coached the St. Louisan to the Blues’ only championship.

“He’s a winner and he’s a great teammate. I texted him, and that’s the two things I told him. I don’t think there’s a bigger compliment than those two things, personally, as a hockey player.”

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