The one player the Leafs can least afford to lose for any length of time…

As I was watching the Leafs hold off (take it to?) the Penguins at the ACC on Saturday night, one question kept coming back to me.  And it was no doubt reappearing in my hockey consciousness because we have talked here throughout the early part of the season about the mounting Leaf injury/absence situation. 

As someone noted in the VLM comments section, however, most teams face injuries.  A few seasons back, the Leafs were largely quite fortunate compared to what a lot of teams in the East were facing. So Toronto is hardly unique in this regard.  (The Pens themselves lost a key player Saturday night on what looked like a fairly innocuous hit from David Clarkson.)

Good teams have to not only play—and fight—through injuries, they have to win while doing so.  It’s the NHL.  “Next man up” has got to be the mentality. And it generally is. (And the Leafs have continued to win, despite a lot of critical commentary...)

Now, all this said, some players are maybe more important, more “valuable” (as distinguished from “better” or more skilled players, in some cases), right?  So the question that kept popping back into my head was simply: what current Leaf would most be missed if he was gone for any length of time, or for an entire season?

I waded through the names.  A goalie?  Sure.  Bernier and Reimer have both been pretty darn good overall—each in their own way, with rather different styles.  (On that note- if this is indeed a bottom-line, results-oriented business, do we much care if one guy is more controlled, composed and “efficient” if the other netminder stops just as many pucks? Hasek, for example, was hardly under control at all times…) But if one of our goalies is hurt, the other fills in. There’s no great loss, in a sense.  We just bring up a guy from the Marlies to play what amounts to every fifth game anyway.

Now, if Kessel were to be gone for a long time of course we would notice and miss his explosiveness and productivity.  Saturday night was example number (is infinite a number?) whatever of just how he can have a fairly quiet—by his standards—game and then in a moment, change the outcome.  (I think, by the way, Kessel is putting to rest the notion that some of us may have had over the years that the guy doesn't like to play that much.  I’m pretty sure he shows how much he loves the game by the swashbuckling way he leads the offense—and his reaction after every big Leaf goal. Almost memories of Mats Sundin...)

Recognizing Kessel’s obvious impact, we now have a number of guys who are front-line offensive players.  I don’t mean they are all first-line forwards, but the Leafs now have a roster with people who can play at a high level.  Clarkson and Bolland may not score a ton—though Bolland is showing otherwise so far—but they are both a nasty piece of work out there.  Lupul, if only he will learn to wear his equipment during practice (selfish, by the way—safety trumps comfort) could pick up the offensive slack, as would Kadri.

So while the loss of one formidable forward would be damaging, it may not be devastating. And I say that in part because we now have goaltending and we also (finally) have a third and forth line who are closer to true third and fourth lines—trios that can check and, at times, shut down or at least often hem  the opposition in their own zone.  We can win close games.  We don't need to score 5 goals a night to earn two points.

We’ve played without Lupul for a fair bit of the past two seasons, so while he is dearly important, we have won without him.  Kadri would be a loss for a lot of reasons.  His edgy play is a treat, not to make his ability to see the ice.  That’s a gift. But we would shift guys around and probably make a deal to acquire someone to give us a bit of offensive production in his absence. (Hey Grabovski is not playing big minutes in Washington, after his auspicious debut in Game 1; maybe he’s available…)

I love McClement and he is a very valuable part of the puzzle, but I don’t think we would need to be forlorn if he was out. (The penalty kill would suffer, and I acknowledge that has been a significant element in the Leaf ‘resurgence’ the last two seasons. But otherwise, we have the pieces to fill in for him.)

Bottom line, while those players are not easily replaceable, the Leafs could work around their losses to some degree.

So this leads me to our defense corps, as I talked about the other day here.  I think you know where I’m going with this. Gunnarsson played hurt a year ago and seems healthy now.  He’s a nice second-pair defenseman and like any decent NHL player would leave a hole if he was out.  But 'OK' defensemen we seem to have a lot of in the system.  I certainly would miss Franson, who brings different dimensions to his position at both ends of the ice—some smart offensive skills and the ability to get the puck to the net, as well as a physicality that most of us did not necessarily anticipate when we first saw him here.

The kids, like Gardiner and Rielly, have immense potential and yes, would be missed—though more at times for the dreams fans have for them than for what they may deliver on any given night this season.

But the one indispensible Leaf right now, the guy who plays the most minutes, kills penalties, handles the point on the power play and is asked to - as best he can - shut down the opposition’s top forwards every night, game in and game out, is, of course, the captain.

To me, the once maligned (and still un-signed) Phaneuf is the one player on the Leafs right now that we would have the most difficult time living without.  Jake Gardiner could probably play 30 minutes a night (he barely looks like he has to breathe out there) but would we want that at this stage of his career?  I don’t sense he is quite in a place, defensively at least, to take on that kind of responsibility. I sense we are already stretching Gunner about as far as he can go as a first-pairing guy.  Maybe Franson could take on more, sure, but like most players, he may have his own ceiling that really isn’t being tested right now in the situations he plays in.

The bottom line?  Dion Phaneuf may well be the most “valuable” Leaf right now.  Not necessarily their best or most skilled player, but the most important guy on this roster. I did not picture myself saying this three years ago, or even last season. But when I look at where the team has come from, where it is, who helped get them here, as much as I have voiced at times only middlish support for the captain, it is time for me to give him his due.

One way I can do that is by acknowledging where he fits right now.  New contract or not, he is, to me, the one player we can ill afford, and in truth, least afford to lose if we have serious aspirations of a playoff run—whatever that might mean—in the spring of 2014.

Yes? No?

**

Update: over the weekend I received notice that my eBook, "The Maple Leafs of My Youth: what being a Leaf fan means to me" is now available on Amazon Kindle!  More details are available here.