Cronin served as an assistant coach with the Maple Leafs team that broke a nine-year playoff drought.
Cronin served as an assistant coach with the Maple Leafs team that broke a nine-year playoff drought.
ANAHEIM — Greg Cronin has had an extensive coaching career in the NHL. With the Toronto Maple Leafs in town this week, the Anaheim Ducks reflected on his memories as an assistant in Toronto from 2011-2014. Of course, sandwiched in the middle of tenure was the 2013 season, one that saw the Maple Leafs earn a playoff berth for the first time in nine years.
There was a turning point for Toronto. After dismissing Ron Wilson in February of 2012, the Maple Leafs visited the Boston Bruins. Randy Carlyle, who was installed as Wilson's replacement, watched as the Bruins blanked the Leafs 9-0.
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"They beat us up bad. We looked like we were playing pond hockey and they were getting ready for a playoff run," Cronin said. "I think (Mike) Komisarek got beat up by (Milan) Lucic and it was by our bench and Randy got pissed off. Randy liked to play a physical brand of hockey. We just didn’t have that brand to match the Bruins.
The Leafs brought in physical players during the offseason. Frazer McLaren and Colton Orr (who spent most of the previous season in the minors) were brought back up and the Leafs began the 2013 season to be a more physical team.
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"That was our rallying cry, we talked about how we were going to be a tough team to play against.
The Maple Leafs punched their ticket to the postseason in the lockout-shortened 2013 season with a 26-17-5 record and as the No. 5 seed in the Eastern Conference, the club was paired with the No. 4 seeded Bruins in the first round.
"Going into that series, there was still that little bit of fear," Cronin said of the Leafs. "You can feel that in that first game in the Garden, we lost and I don’t know if we touched the puck for more than four minutes. They were running us."
The Leafs held practice at Boston University between Games 1 and 2 of that series and Cronin remembers showing footage of Leafs forward Clarke MacArthur turning the puck over as Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara approached him.
MacArthur ended up being scratched for that game as the Leafs tried to send a message.
"He's probably still mad at me over that one," Cronin said. "But we were sending a silver bullet through the room that everybody better play on their toes and play hard."
"From that moment on that series changed."
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The Leafs went on to win Game 2, but the Leafs remained massive underdogs against a Bruins team that was mostly intact and had won the Stanley Cup in 2011. The Leafs forced Game 7 and were up 4-1 in the third period before collapsing and falling to Boston 5-4 in overtime. But Cronin looks back at that experience in a positive manner.
"The analytics had them favoured quite a bit, but the style we played was aggressive," Cronin said.
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It was also the first time the Leafs had used Maple Leafs Square, a renovated space outside Scotiabank Arena used for massive viewing parties.
"We pumped that crowd into the pre-games and it gave us an additional source of energy. I’ll never forget that, in my 36 years of coaching, some of the funnest moments I had just watching our team respond to that."
Eleven years later, Morgan Rielly is the only player who is still around in the Leafs organization following Cronin's exit in 2014. A much more talented team than they were then, the Leafs have brought in more physical players under new GM Brad Treliving to be a bit more physical.
Cronin's Ducks, meanwhile, are rebuilding and figuring out what they are. But Cronin still remembers how close the Leafs were in 2013 to beating the Bruins in Game 7.
"I remember when Nazem (Kadri) scored the goal to make it 4-1, I looked down their bench and it was the first time I saw the Bruins all hunched over and looking at their skates, like ‘ok, this is done’.
"And then they got that goal (to make it 4-2). I still remember it went through a crowd of skates, I think Horton scored it just by (James) Reimer’s crease.
The rest, as they say, is history.
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