NIAGARA FALLS, Ont. — Martin Marincin tucked himself into a bit of shade surrounding the Gale Centre in Niagara Falls, Ont., the site of the Maple Leafs training camp this weekend, in an attempt to shield his eyes from the surprisingly hot September sun.
Marincin prefers not to talk about last season, nor the appendectomy he had before it began, nor his struggles in seasons before that. The 25-year-old, boasting 175 games of NHL experience, has a private Instagram account and hasn’t written a tweet in four years. He’s posted six tweets, in total, since he joined the social media giant in 2011.
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Marincin is just as mysterious on the ice as he is off it — a riddle yet to be solved by the Leafs. And time to solve it may be running short in Toronto.
Three rookies are gunning for his job this fall and the Leafs head coach sounds nearly ready to move on from the former second-round pick if he isn’t able to build confidence this season, and finally put it all together on the ice.
Mike Babcock described Marincin as an “elite defender.”
“(He) can really skate, can pass the puck, does a lot of things, but he’s never really grabbed hold of it yet. And so what happens in the league if you don’t eventually grab hold of it, you’re not in the league anymore.”
“That’s a tough spot,” he added. “You’ve got to decide to feel good about yourself.”
That’s been his main problem: Marincin has struggled to feel good about himself on the ice.
Babcock, who in the past found it difficult to muster more than a mumbled hello from Marincin, said the Slovakian defender would achieve confidence if he found success on the ice. To illustrate Marincin’s predicament, the Leafs coach used a comparison of a hockey-crazed parent who forces his or her kid to lace up the skates and throw on the jersey and “he goes there and he gets beat down every day. (He’s) probably not building confidence…”
“It’s the same in our league,” Babcock said. “I can’t do it. They’ve got to find their way.”
Speaking about the upcoming season, Marincin said he needed to exhibit a more confident game and get back to what he described as the best stretch of his NHL career: a stint on the Leafs top pair late in the 2015-16 season.
Doing so meant focusing on his feet and keeping them moving.
“My dad told me that if you’re skating every shift, you’re a good player on the ice,” said Marincin said of his father, Vladimir, who watches his son’s games live while it’s the middle of the night in Slovakia. “If you’re skating and moving on the ice, you’re playing good and you feel good. So I think this is his point.”
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Marincin said he needed to keep his skates moving to keep pace with the puck and players. Be close to both, he said, “and you can do anything.”
For Marincin, above all, that means using his long reach that comes with his 6-foot-4 frame to poke pucks away from opponents. He can be a nuisance that way defending his own blue-line or clogging up passing lanes around the front of the net.
“I’ve played with him before and been (defending) a two-on-two rush and he comes over and he pokes the puck free and I’m surprised,” said Connor Carrick, comparing his reach to Bruins behemoth Zdeno Chara. “That caught me off-guard.”
“Marty’s ability to get to places with his size is so special for him,” Carrick added of Marincin, a one-time star of the Western Hockey League’s Prince George Cougars. “He’s able to kind of get into spots where he’s tight on people and he kind of sneaks and makes those reads with his stick.”
Marincin was at his best in his first season with the Leafs. He finished the season alongside Morgan Rielly on the team’s top pair.
Among Leaf defenders that played at least half the games that year, Marincin finished at the top in terms of possession (53.6 per cent) and both Rielly and Roman Polak, his most common defensive partners, were more effective with him by their side.
“I wasn’t playing too much (that) first season, first half-season and then I say in my head, ‘Stop. I’m going to play good now and work hard’ and that (worked),” Marincin recalled of the stretch, which included a career-high 30-minute outing. “It’s tough to say (why), it just came.”
In that span, Marincin also proved himself adept as a penalty killer, not so surprising given that length advantage.
The Leafs didn’t get that defender last year though. Instead they got one who struggled to even hold a spot in the lineup.
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Marincin recalled working out intensely during the off-season that followed his apparent, long-awaited NHL breakthrough only to require an appendectomy in August – weeks before training camp of the 2016-17 season.
It was his first in a series of stumbling blocks.
Though he managed to draw the opening night nod and log 20 minutes, Marincin proceeded to bounce in and out of the lineup throughout the season. Then he got hurt, missed more than a month, played a couple weeks worth of games and finally sat for all but two of the final 32 games.
He was scratched more throughout the season (38 games) than he played (25 games).
Even so, an opportunity came around in the playoffs with Nikita Zaitsev and Polak both nursing injuries, but his struggles — perhaps not surprisingly given his layoff — persisted.
Marincin finished at 44 per cent possession in the first-round series against Washington. Most notably, he threw away the puck, which led to Tom Wilson’s Game 1 overtime winner.
“I don’t want to talk about those seasons,” Marincin said. “I want to talk about this season now.”
In addition to his work with a power skating coach this summer, Marincin also snuck in some mixed martial arts training, which he hoped would help with his coordination. He’s a big MMA fan, though he had no vested interest in who won the recent Conor McGregor-Floyd Mayweather bout, he said.
Edmonton, despite being short on NHL defenders, opted to part with Marincin one day after drafting Connor McDavid first overall in June 2015 after he played only 85 regular season games for them. The Leafs, for whom Marincin has now played 90 regular season games (plus another six in the playoffs), seem to be at that point or close to it.
While Marincin would seem to be the favourite on the left side of a prospective third pair given his experience, a poor camp could dim his prospects. So could a dazzling September from either Calle Rosen, known to skate up a storm; Andreas Borgman, a ripped 22-year-old coming off Swedish Hockey League rookie of the year honours; or Travis Dermott, the feisty 20-year-old from Newmarket.
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At worst, the Leafs probably keep Marincin around if only to preserve an asset, who might otherwise be claimed on waivers. Babcock said the club wouldn’t get “silly” when it came to considering contractual status in picking the final roster.
But whether he makes the team or not, Marincin’s fortunes internally could be on their last lap. Another year like the last one for the pending restricted free agent — his two-year deal expires after the coming year — and it’s entirely conceivable that the organization cuts ties with him.
It’s all the more likely if one of the rookies snatches a spot sometime soon.
“The one thing about the players, they’re smart, they know what’s going on,” Babcock said. “He knows the situation he’s in so he’s got to have a good training camp.”
*Advanced stats courtesy of Natural Stat-Trick
(Photo credit: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports)