Welcome to Team Truculence: A Look at the Maple Leafs and the Rest of the NHL

Welcome to Team Truculence.

Mike Zeisburger hit the nail on the head with this one, because after July 1st, that may as well be the modus operandi of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

As always, with the season within itself, the NHL’s Free Agency period has produced some winner, and some losers.  Luckily enough for Toronto fans, the Leafs are near the top of the Winners list.

Now, any good “truculent” team needs a pure fighter, someone who can instill the fear of pain in opposing teams.  Someone who will give your smallish skill players that extra second to make a decision, extra few inches to make the play.  At 6’3”, 222 lbs, Colton Orr does all of these things, and he does so with a smile on his face. 

Playing in all 82 games last season, Orr had all of 1 goal & 5 points.  He did however have a career high 192 PIM, which placed him 3rd in the NHL last season. 

Unlike those above him in the PIM category, Daniel Carcillo & Shane O’Brien, Orr won’t play a lot of minutes per game.  He averaged 6:29 per game last year, and I wouldn’t expect that to trend upward with the Leafs.

The next player we will look at is Garnet Exelby.  Exelby, a 6’1”, 215 lbs defensive defensemen, is a 3rd pairing defensemen who will provide plenty of toughness when he is on the ice. 

A regular member of Atlanta’s PK unit for several years, Exelby had 7 assists and was only a -2 while averaging 16:43 per game over 59 games last season. For anyone who notices that he got more ice time in the past and is wondering if maybe he is a top-4 D, note that in the two years he averaged more than 18 minutes per game, he was a double-digit minus player both times. 

Finally, and very, very thankfully, we come to the Leafs’ big acquisition on Canada Day.  Mike Komisarek, the top defensive defensemen available (and after Scott Neidermayer, who I’ll talk more about later, the top D-man available altogether).

The 27 year old Komisarek signed a 5 year, $22.5 million contract, which will see him make $4.5 million per year. 

The talk earlier in the season was that he would be looking for upwards of $6 million (hence my 5 year, $27.5 million suggestion on Monday), so it’s great to see that such talk was obviously non-existent on Wednesday. 

Okay, let’s get this out of the way right now. Komisarek played like crap after coming back from the Lucic-inflicted shoulder injury last season. You know what that & a buck-fifty will get you? A cup of coffee. Whatever. 

He played on the most dysfunctional team in the NHL last year. Go down the roster of big players (Kovalev, Price, Plekanec, Koivu, Tanguay) and you’ll only find one, Andrei Markov, who played anywhere near his potential. If the shoulder is healthy (and it must be for Leafs’ GM Brian Burke to commit to the money and term that he did), Komisarek will be fine.

I remember coming back from the lockout, Komisarek was a little-known defensemen in Montreal, who just happened to always be matched up against Mats Sundin’s line when Toronto and Montreal met. It took about 2 seconds of watching them fight for the puck down low to realize how good Komisarek was. 

Sundin would try to use his 6’4”, 230 lbs frame to shield the puck, but Komisarek used his own 6’4”, 240 lbs frame to punish Sundin physically, and not allow him to create any scoring chances from Gretzky’s Office. 

This play happened countless times in the ensuing battles over the years, and is why Komisarek is regarded as one of the top handful of defensive defensemen in the NHL today.

One of the questions I’ve been asked in the last couple of days is “Didn’t Toronto overpay for Komisarek, considering the fact that he doesn’t score?”  I find it a shame that people only see a defensemen’s worth in the obvious (easily the single-greatest reason why Scott Stevens never won a Norris Trophy—what, you didn’t realize?). 

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