When the Toronto Marlies won a record 54 of 76 games last season, it was expected. They iced a roster on a nightly basis that included a cast of the AHL’s longtime best players, including T.J. Brennan and Mark Arcobello among others, as well as its reigning highest-scoring rookie (Connor Brown) and its brightest young superstar (William Nylander).
After a summer that saw the AHL’s top team lose seven of its eight leading scorers, the chance to repeat as the AHL’s most dominant team this season should have proven difficult. Nylander and Brown graduated alongside Connor Carrick, Josh Leivo and Zach Hyman, while fixtures such as Arcobello, Brennan, Sam Carrick, Ben Smith and Matt Frattin left the Marlies for other opportunities.
In the AHL, where success is cyclical, teams don’t often replenish their top talent on a year-to-year basis. But the Marlies aren’t a typical AHL team. From top to bottom, the Toronto Maple Leafs organization has dedicated itself to gathering and developing as much young talent as possible.
Through five games, tasked with a roster of almost entirely new faces, the Sheldon Keefe-coached Marlies are again the AHL’s premier team. On Sunday afternoon, at Toronto’s Ricoh Coliseum, they improved to 4-1 on the season with a dominant win over the Manitoba Moose, the farm team of the Winnipeg Jets — one of the only organizations whose pool of young talent can stand up with the Leafs.
Leading the way, are two relative Marlies ‘veterans’: Kasperi Kapanen and Brendan Leipsic.
Kapanen, the fourth youngest Marlies player, is an AHL sophomore after turning 20 this summer. And while he’s only two to four months older than rookies Dmytro Timashov, Andrew Nielsen and Travis Dermott, Kapanen has been dominant through five games in his second full season in North America.
“It’s just one of those starts where it seems that the game just feels really good and when I have the puck on my stick it feels good,” Kapanen said of his growth.
On Sunday, after fooling around in warmup, the young Finnish winger scored on his first shift of the game, receiving a pass from centre Frederik Gauthier off the rush before beating former Jets goaltender Ondrej Pavelec low blocker far-side. Kapanen, the fastest player on either team, created chances throughout the game before closing it out with the lone goal, already his seventh point of the season.
Playing on a line with Gauthier and fellow up-tempo winger Nikita Soshnikov, Kapanen was confident with the puck on his stick and quick to retrieve it when it wasn’t, weaving in and out of traffic almost effortlessly to register five shots on goal while creating a number of quality chances for his linemates. On offensive zone draws, he stepped back to the top of the circle in order to retrieve clean faceoff wins and curl to the slot for a shot — confident that if the draw was pushed to his wing that he could still close the gap and win the footrace.
Late in the second period, after retrieving a loose puck down low, Kapanen converted on a play that few — if any — in the AHL would attempt or pull off, carrying it across his crease above Marlies goalie Antoine Bibeau, before pivoting with one hand on his stick to push the puck past two eager forecheckers and escape the zone at full speed. The catalyst on his line, and on the powerplay, Kapanen also used his speed to create a pair of semi-breakaways in the third period, blowing by Moose defender Julian Melchiori twice.
After Rich Clune missed a portion of the game after a hard collision, Kapanan also double-shifted twice on the fourth line. Like Kapanen, Leipsic also double-shifted in Clune’s absence.
Keyed on by the Moose all game as the Marlies’ biggest threat, Leipsic was a physical target. And for a player who stands 5-9 and weighs 170 Ibs, Leipsic wasn’t shy to dish it back. Late in the third period, after he’d picked up two assists to takeover the lead as the AHL’s leading scorer with nine points in five games, including a secondary assist on a Justin Holl goal that saw him cycle the puck for nearly a minute with linemate Tobias Lindberg, Leipsic’s frustrations got the best of him with a late roughing penalty after Lindberg was checked from behind. Throughout the game, the 22-year-old was dangerous, sliding in and out of the slot to create chances thanks to his marquee forechecking.
“I’m just trying to be smart with the puck and not turn it over,” Leipsic said of his game this year after the 4-0 win, where the Marlies again outshot their opponent — this time 34-22.
The result?
“The puck has been on my stick quite a lot this year.”
And while they don’t do it alone and the Marlies have done well to insulate Leipsic and Kapenen with new depth in the form of Swedish sniper Andreas Johnsson, college standout Trevor Moore, and draft day acquisition Kerby Rychel. In fact, the Marlies are so deep, particularly up front, that they were able to scratch the likes of standout rookie Dmytro Timashov and NHL veteran Brooks Laich on Sunday.
But Kapanen, an extremely young player — let alone star — by AHL standards, has come a long way in a short period of time to becoming arguably the Marlies’ top scoring threat.
“I think confidence is a big thing and experience is certainly a part of that. In Kapanen’s case, that’s a real big factor,” Keefe said of his young scorer. “It’s really nice to see. When we reflected upon the playoffs last season, we looked at each guy and he was one guy who I thought just really grew on that run from starting the playoffs as a healthy scratch to just making plays for us in Game 7s.”
This year, Kapanen has picked up where he left off, according to his coach.
“It was good to see him continue with that all the way through Leafs camp as well, I thought he was great there and really made a strong impression and he has just carried it right through so he’s got a ton of confidence,” Keefe added.
Kapanen believes his time with the Leafs has helped him become more dominant in the AHL after putting up 25 points in 44 games last season.
“Ever since that first game I have felt confident in myself.”
And while it was only last year that Kapanen was the Marlies’ youngest player, he feels more like a veteran than a rookie.
“I feel pretty experienced for my age, we’ll put it like that,” he said.
For Leipsic, the points have started to come but little else has changed.
“Leipsic’s just a great player,” Keefe said simply. “He has proven that over and over again.”
Soon, both Leipsic and Kapanen could be great players for the Leafs too.