Maple Leafs at point where Troy Stecher must set an example

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Troy Stecher, all 5-foot-10 and 184 pounds of him, has arrived in Toronto with a chip on his shoulder.

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That was the word on Monday from the Maple Leafs’ latest defenceman following his first practice at the Ford Performance Centre, where he was on a pairing with Dakota Mermis.

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“Where do you want me to start?” Stecher said. “Being told ‘no’ my whole life, being a smaller guy. The NHL, it’s my 10th year, it’s my seventh team. I’m trying to prove people wrong, and more than anything, just prove myself right.”

Already, the new guy has set an example for a Leafs team that can’t string together enough components of sound hockey to win a game.

It shouldn’t be that way, but the Leafs right now are in such a bad spot that they’re on the verge of doing something that has not happened in these parts since Nov. 2019.

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If the Leafs lose at home against the St. Louis Blues on Tuesday night, it will mark Toronto’s first six-game losing streak since a similar run that ended Mike Babcock’s tenure behind the Leafs bench.

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When Babcock was fired on Nov. 20, 2019, in Arizona, the Leafs were 9-10-4 and had gone 0-5-1 in what turned out to be his final six games.

Underachieving

The Leafs drag an 8-9-2 mark into Tuesday night against a Blues team that has won three of its past seven games after losing seven in a row. Toronto’s overall underachieving has put it in seventh place in the Atlantic Division, four points out of a wild-card spot.

This isn’t the position we, or anyone else, figured the Leafs would be in as they hit the quarter-mark of their season.

Never mind reclaiming the division title in 2025-26, the Leafs will have to fight simply to earn a playoff berth.

We’re not yet ready to suggest that coach Craig Berube is in serious trouble, but calls for his job will grow if the Leafs don’t come out of their next two games, at home versus the Blues and the Columbus Blue Jackets at Scotiabank Arena on Thursday, with some tangible growth. Points from winning wouldn’t hurt either.

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A players dinner in Chicago on Saturday following the loss, with a flight home on Sunday, might have given some bounce to a struggling club. Not so with the Leafs, who had to be prodded in practice by Berube, who later noted that the energy was low to start.

The Leafs have been done in not only by lacklustre hockey, but a lack of depth. A raft of injuries has exposed the group as being not as deep as it thinks it is.

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True, if you take a calibre of a group that includes goalie Anthony Stolarz, defencemen Chris Tanev and Brandon Carlo, and centres Auston Matthews, Nicolas Roy and Scott Laughton out of any lineup, the chances to win diminish.

There should be no impact on the competitive nature of the healthy players, though, and it simply hasn’t been high enough from those in uniform.

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William Nylander — who has gone two games in a row without recording a shot on goal for the first time since December 2019 — John Tavares and Morgan Rielly have to find another level to help lead the group out of the mire.

The ails certainly don’t fall on one player. There was a need, however, to acquire another right-shooting defenceman because Philippe Myers hasn’t been a capable replacement with Tanev and Carlo on the sideline.

So the Leafs claimed the 31-year-old Stecher, a veteran of 566 National Hockey League games who hasn’t nailed down a lengthy stay with a team since 2016-20, when he was a member of his hometown Vancouver Canucks.

Mishmash in the middle

At centre, Jacob Quillan has been recalled from the Toronto Marlies with the news that Roy is out with an upper-body injury.

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After John Tavares, the Leafs have Max Domi, Quillan and Steven Lorentz — usually a winger — up the middle. Tell us again how the departed David Kampf, now with the Canucks, couldn’t have filled in even on a temporary basis?

For his part, Stecher, wearing No. 28 with Toronto, is eager to get this chapter of his career going, though he might later wonder what he was getting into if the Leafs earning some respect back.

He told a good story about being in the same birth year as Rielly, another B.C. kid, and how he spent years in minor hockey competing against him and “chasing him around, trying to be as good as he was.”

The goal for Stecher now is to move the puck with competence out of the defensive zone. That’s why he is here.

For their part, Stecher’s new teammates might want to play with a chip on their collective shoulders.

The new guy shouldn’t have to set an example, but that’s the state the Leafs have put themselves in as they hit their 20th game of 2025-26.

tkoshan@postmedia.com

X: @koshtorontosun

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