Quinn has to repeat the magic

By KEN FIDLIN -- Toronto Sun As he begins his second season with the Maple Leafs, Pat Quinn has the same array of weapons at his disposal, except for very important one.
The element of surprise.
When Quinn's 1998-99 Leafs broke training camp nobody much believed the team was embarking on a season that would result in a playoff spot, let alone a trip to the conference championships. It was exciting enough to be returning to the Eastern Conference and play against natural rivals.
Quinn inherited a team coming off two dismal 30-win seasons and, while goalie Curtis Joseph promised to be a step up from Felix Potvin, there hardly was unbridled enthusiasm around town for a run at the Stanley Cup.
Then the Leafs started out with three wins in a row and never looked back. A team that hadn't seen the sunny side of .500 in more than two years stayed above that mark the entire season, finishing with 97 points, 28 more than the previous year.
More than that, the Leafs delighted fans and confounded opponents by playing a brand of firewagon hockey not seen in this town in many years. The team even led the league in scoring with 268 goals.
We now take you to the 1999-2000 season, which for Toronto begins tonight at the Molson Centre in Montreal. Most of the Maple Leafs faces are the same, but the circumstances are very different.
It is no longer an acceptable goal simply to make the playoffs. It is no longer acceptable to put up a picket fence across the blue line and slow the game down to a crawl.
The Leafs introduced fans to a different brand of hockey last season and the fans liked it. They want more of it.
That is the web of rising expectations that has snared the Maple Leafs, despite an off-season that produced very little in the way of new talent. If the young players who responded so well in Quinn's first year can take another step up, then the paying customers will be satisfied.
However successful the Leafs are, Quinn, now general manager as well as coach, intends the team will come out with guns blazing.
"I bristle at (the term) run and gun," he said. "We don't intend to play that way. Sometimes when you watch us you get that impression, but it's not what the coach asks.
"We like to have a good, strong transition to offence and when we do we intend to try to score. If that's run and gun, it's not the way I see it. It's the game of hockey.
"That's the theory that we have. It's based on transition. If we're a good transition team to offence, then we go on offence and we need to get better the other way. I don't want a gambling team. I want a team that takes good, calculated risks, percentage-type risks, to score goals."
That's more or less what Quinn said before last season. When his back was turned, everybody smirked and wondered whether those big, fat stogies Quinn prefers were rolled with something stronger than tobacco.
Nobody's laughing this year. After he breathed life into a moribund hockey team last year, people believe in Quinn. Now, if his hockey team can deliver, it could be another exciting season.
"We scored the most goals in the league and believe it or not, we did it with a power play that was below average," captain Mats Sundin said. "That means there's a chance we can do even better this year, as long as we can get our power play sorted out."
It will take a lot more than that, however. Last year's team developed into a close-knit unit right from the start. It believed in its philosophy and the players believed in their abilities. Quinn knows that doesn't just happen automatically. It has to evolve.

CONFIDENCE
"I don't think attitude is a problem here," Quinn said. "What happens is, it needs to be coupled with a number of other things. Confidence. Trust. You have to rebuild your trust in your teammates. That's something that has to be seen. It doesn't mean it's not there, but we haven't been in those game situations yet.
"We didn't know if we had it coming out of camp last year and we had to find it and we will again this year, probably in circumstances that are going to be tougher than we faced last year at the start."
At the heart of those circumstances are the elevated expectations, both from inside and outside the organization, that will either make or break this hockey team.

Ken Fidlin's column appears Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. He can be reached via e-mail at kfidlin@sunpub.com

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