OTTAWA — When Mike Babcock took the Leafs’ bench for the first time as their head coach on Oct. 7, 2015, he might as well have had two fourth lines.
His quote-unquote third line, featured Daniel Winnik, Nick Spaling and P.A. Parenteau. His fourth line slotted Peter Holland between Leo Komarov and Mark Arcobello.
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The Leafs lost that game 3-1, and in the bulk of the 245 regular season games that have followed, Babcock hasn’t been satisfied with the sum of the parts that have made up his fourth line.
Today, none of the six players who made up his bottom-six three years ago remain. Winnik, Spaling and Parenteau were always meant to be trade bait. Babcock wasn’t especially fond of Holland and Arcobello from Day 1. And Komarov, the lone player he grew to like, played higher in the lineup than the fourth line for the bulk of those three seasons.
A year after Babcock’s debut, he opened his second season as Leafs head coach with Holland between Matt Martin and Connor Brown.
Last season, after the team moved Holland because he was too often relegated to the press box, the Leafs opened Babcock’s third season with Eric Fehr wedged between Martin and Brown. Fehr lasted four games and was later replaced by Dominic Moore — who didn’t have Babcock’s favour from very early on in training camp.
It wasn’t for lack of trying. The Leafs have made a concerted effort to find Babcock a fit, too.
They made back-to-back deadline deals to acquire Brian Boyle and Tomas Plekanec to help stabilize their fourth line … and then they didn’t feel the need to retain either, likely because they didn’t feel they were the solution.
Babcock is picky about players 10-through-12 on his depth chart. So much so that he got involved in the Leafs’ recruitment process for their newest toy at fourth-line centre, Par Lindholm.
Lindholm, who made his preseason debut on Wednesday night in a 4-1 win against the Senators, could be one part of a fourth line that Babcock is finally happy with.
If first impressions matter, and they seem to matter to Babcock, that debut –which saw Lindholm slide between Kasperi Kapanen and Andreas Johnsson and play big minutes after losing Frederik Gauthier midway through — was a success.
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Lindholm drew a third-period slashing penalty and hopped over the boards with the late lead and the Senators’ net empty. Lindholm also joined Kapanen on the team’s new-look penalty killing unit.
“I thought Lindholm’s group was real solid for us. They give us another line and played against their best line most of the night and did a good job,” Babcock said.
“I thought Kappy was alright. Him and Johnny to me have to be real important players for us so I expect a lot out of those guys. They’ve got more to give for sure but their line had a tough matchup tonight and I thought Lindholm did a nice job for us and got better as the game went on.”
For Lindholm, his time with the Leafs has been a whirlwind early on.
It began with a shock when he stepped off the Leafs’ bus in Niagara Falls over the weekend and the fans who lined the streets already knew his name.
“I had looked forward to it for a long time. It was (a) pretty sick first day when we pulled up and there were a ton of people on the road. It was amazing,” Lindholm said. “We had a pretty nice fan base back home and the fans were crazy there too but you can’t compare it to here. I think our town had 30,000 people and here it’s millions.”
The details, from Babcock on down as he has tried to learn their systems, have also been overwhelming for Lindholm — even though he says his coaching staff in Skelleftea were more detail-oriented than most in the Swedish Hockey League.
Having Babcock, who travelled to see him play more than once and is familiar with his game, helps.
“I just need to let loose and play. I think when I get used to it I’m going to be able to perform more and certainly be a nice player. I like the details. Babcock knows exactly what I’m going for. There are certainly things he wants to pick at in my game and I’m going to try to adapt as fast as possible. He’s one of the reasons why I chose Toronto, because I knew that the coach was involved in the signing and some other clubs I just talked to the manager. He’s the one who’s going to play me on the ice,” Lindholm said.
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By the time his first game was finished, he was still playing catch-up. But he was happy with how he did, considering the circumstances.
“It feels tighter when I handled the puck in the neutral zone. You don’t have as much space and you feel it. But I got to adapt and it’s fun, that style. The second and the third period were really good. We created a lot of chances but we couldn’t score. I played good today,” he said. “It’s the first game for real and if you look at the big picture it was a good game for me. I’ve been taking a lot of responsibility my last four seasons defensively so that’s the part I want to play.”
He has to play some catch-up on the ice with his linemates too.
On Wednesday, he didn’t look out of place — nor did he look behind the play.
Lindholm recognized, he said, almost immediately that Kapanen and Johnsson were the two fastest players on the team and that he would have to cater to them.
“We’re going to take advantage of our speed. That’s a big quality that those guys have and if they don’t use it they’re dumb,” he said with a laugh. “I love to play with those guys. I’m just trying to keep up and give them the puck and get moving.”
This fourth line will have a decidedly different look and feel than the heavy, chip-and-chase style the Martin lines of season’s past played.
A week before Wednesday’s game, as the Leafs opened training camp in Toronto and crowds of media swarmed John Tavares, Kasperi Kapanen stood nearby, detailing exactly why he made all of the decisions that he did this summer to help Babcock do exactly that: change the look of the fourth line.
Now 22, Kapanen is entering his seventh professional season, tired of bouncing between the AHL and the NHL.
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That’s why, after the Leafs were eliminated in Game 7 against the Bruins, Kapanen decided not to join his Marlies teammates for their Calder Cup run, and instead joined Team Finland for the world championships. It’s why he made the choice to train with his dad, Sami, and practice with his team, KalPa, back home in Finland this summer, instead of sticking around in Toronto. It’s why he tried to add weight this summer — he’s always been the fastest player on his team but he wanted to be among the strongest too. It’s why, three weeks before camp began, he jetted back to Toronto and worked out and skated nearly seven days a week — and even got his tests over with so that when camp came around he didn’t have to worry about them and could focus on making the team. That’s why, 20 minutes before practice on Monday morning, he was the lone player on the ice.
His plan: Eliminate the excuses for sending him back.
“I want to be stronger and a bit bigger but I have to maintain my speed because that’s my No. 1 asset and I need to use that as much as possible. I feel like I’m faster, I’m stronger, a little bit of everything — I feel great. It’s a little tricky balancing speed with weight but you think about it and do it in a smart way and I think my dad being, in my opinion, one of the fastest players to play the game, I think he knows what he’s talking about and what he’s doing so I decided to work with him. He made me a plan and I stuck to it. It was just me and my dad really doing a bunch of stuff but I think we got everything done this summer,” Kapanen said.
“It has been a long road and sometimes it’s not easy being patient but I think I’m starting to prove myself that I’m ready and I’m going to go into camp and prove that I can play and there’s no second thought, it’s just everyone can see that I need to be on the team. The hard part’s over and the fun begins now.”
He also just missed home, and his family and friends after so much time spent away as a young adult. He thought about sticking around for the Calder Cup run, and he was jealous of his friends — and their afterparty — when they won it, but he knew he needed a longer summer to focus on his ultimate goal: cracking the Leafs’ lineup.
“I think it was the better choice,” Kapanen said, before crediting Marlies head coach Sheldon Keefe and skills coaches Mike Ellis and Darryl Belfry for turning him into the player he is today.
“They really helped me out during these three years and I can’t thank them enough. I think I’m a complete player now – a more complete player – and I’m ready to take a spot.”
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Two seasons ago, Kapanen looked like a top-six-or-bust prospect. But Keefe turned him into a penalty killer — for the first time in his life — and those skills have allowed him to find a new, different role.
“I was a little surprised when they first wanted me to start doing it but I’ve loved it so I can’t complain. You have to take care of your own end first but if there’s ever a chance for me to try to make something happen on the PK I’m going for it,” he said with a smile.
He knows, too, that he’s got to do it on his own this year. He’s going to miss Komarov, his longtime best friend and former roommate.
He thinks he can play Komarov’s role, though — a role that saw Komarov slide up and down in the lineup and play with a variety of linemates.
“We’ve got some unbelievable centres in the lineup and it doesn’t matter who you’re going to be playing with you’re going to get the puck and be able to make plays. I’ve been at it (the push for the NHL) for a while now and I’ve been working hard and it’s starting to pay off,” Kapanen added.
Johnsson, too, thinks he can be a lot more than a fourth-liner — and looks like he’s going to play the slot on one of the Leafs’ power play units (where he does a nice job tracking the play and sliding to support the wall and come away with retrievals).
But if he’s going to be a fourth-liner, he wants to be really good.
After a summer spent training with John Klingberg, Henrik Lundqvist, Loui Erikson, Anton Blidh, Kevin Fiala and a slew of other NHL players in Sweden, he has worked to play faster so that he can match his playmaking with his foot speed.
“Kap, we started clicking a lot and created opportunities offensively. I feel like our speed is our strong side. We can beat a lot of guys out there,” Johnsson said.
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“I want to do stuff at a higher pace. I worked on coordination and balance so that I’m shiftier. Hopefully I can be better in 1-on-1 situations. I changed a lot due to the shorter time off. I got right back at it working out after a much shorter time away.”
Like Babcock, he sees Lindholm, who he played against in Sweden, as the Leafs’ solution in their fourth-line centre hunt.
“He’s skilled, he’s a very smart guy, he can pass and shoot. Knowing he came from a really good season last year in Sweden, one point per game, I can feel he’s really confident out there and can find passes and spacing,” Johnsson finished.
“I think he’s a very good two-way player and I feel like he can back up me and Kappy really good if we fly down. He’s going to find a position where he can shoot or get back the puck. I think he’s a very complete player who can do everything out there so I don ‘t feel like he’s going to have any problem. He’s going to be really good.”
And maybe — just maybe — Babcock can work with that and finally turn one of the team’s weak spots into a strength.
Top photo: Richard A. Whittaker/Getty Images