Leafs face new reality

By AL STRACHAN -- Toronto Sun ST. LOUIS -- In sports, there always will be adversity. You can build a team that appears to be a champion, only to see a bad bounce, a missed call or a key injury destroy years of planning.
But that's the worst-case scenario. Along the way to the top, there will be countless occurrences that are just as unfortunate, but much less dramatic. Every one is a test, and wise organizations don't whine about the unfairness of it all. They simply accept it as part of the sport and make the most of it.

TOUGH TASK
That's what the Toronto Maple Leafs are trying to do now in the absence of Mats Sundin, just as the St. Louis Blues, who defeated the Leafs on Saturday night, are trying to do in the absence of Al MacInnis.
Each of these players is crucial to his team's success and when players of their calibre go down, you don't just lose 30 minutes of quality playing time, you lose a player who you count upon in critical moments.
Players such as this are out there in all the key situations -- power plays, penalty killing, key faceoffs, late minutes of periods and so on. And when they're missing, their absence is likely to have an impact on the result.
On Saturday, for instance, the Leafs lost a game that started to go wrong when they allowed the Blues to open the scoring with 2.7 seconds left in the first period.
Toronto general manager/coach Pat Quinn saw that goal as the turning point. Defencemen were out of position and somehow, Todd Warriner ended up on right defence, a fact which the Blues' Terry Yake was quick to exploit.
But a couple of seconds earlier, the Leafs lost a battle for possession along the boards. Would Sundin have lost that battle? Probably not.
Even if he hadn't been able to win it, Sundin probably would have found a way to prevent the Blues from gaining clear possession.
But Sundin wasn't there. He was back in Toronto nursing his non-displaced fracture of the ankle, which is a fancy way of saying he has a cracked bone.
MacInnis was there -- but not on the ice. He, too, was nursing an ankle injury and watching from the bowels of Kiel Arena.
The difference in the two situations is that on this night, the Blues' lesser lights came through and filled a large part of the hole created by the star defenceman's absence. The four St. Louis scorers were Yake, Jochen Hecht, Scott Pellerin and Mike Eastwood. In every case, it was the player's first goal of the season. That's rising to the occasion.
The Leafs, on the other hand did everything wrong. Not only did their lesser lights not shine, the usual go-to guys had rare poor games.
The Leafs are learning how to handle their new-found status as an upper echelon team, and this is their latest test. Last season, when they were emerging from the Stygian gloom in which they had dwelt for so long, they knew two things. They had Mats Sundin to score goals and Curtis Joseph to prevent them.
Now, all of a sudden, they're facing a new reality. Someone else will have to score some goals, and the whole team will have to crank up its defensive effort to counter the inevitable reduction in scoring.
Instead of wondering how Sundin's loss will be overcome, the Leafs must thank their lucky stars that Joseph is still healthy and go from there.

LOOK WITHIN
"Over the course of a year, you're always going to have injuries," Blues coach Joel Quenneville said. "What matters is how you deal with them as a team and what you find out about the guys who take advantage of the situation. We could be a better team at the end."
The same is true of the Leafs. They are embarking on what will be a difficult stretch. But if they handle it properly, they will be a better team at the end.

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