NEW SCENT - HOW MATTHEW KNIES' INEXPERIENCE IS MOVING THE LEAFS FORWARD IN THEIR QUEST FOR THE CUP

Mario Russo

Where would the Toronto Maple Leafs be without Matthew Knies?

Whether with the squad or not, the answer likely holds a first-round playoff appearance attached to it, but for how long? Do the Maple Leafs even win a game in their series with the Tampa Bay Lightning? Are goals much harder to come by with his absence from the lineup?

Better yet, is the 20-year old even with the organization after being tossed around as trade bait throughout the weeks leading up to the deadline.

These are all questions that, as it stands heading into a pivotal elimination game against the Bolts, requires little to no thought. In this series alone, the Leafs are 3-0 with Knies dressed in blue and white, picking up wins of both dominance and persistence while doing so.

There’s a reason for that.

Over the last six years, the Maple Leafs’ shortcomings have left scars. Wounds which have been left unsealed, are annually reopened, and worsen with every passing Spring. These gashes sit deep within the hearts of the Leafs core players - the ones who are depended upon the most to relieve this ongoing pain on a yearly basis.

Even the fresh faces, playing in a hockey-crazed market for the first time in their careers, have seen these lashes delivered from a distance. Formed from improbability, battered by consistent inconsistencies.

Yet no matter which end of the traumatic spectrum this playoff roster finds themselves on, the postseason pain of years past still remains soaked in the walls of the dressing room, logged in the minds of those that fill its seats. Every single one of them.

Except one.

Out of the 23 players that have laced up the skates for the Maple Leafs this postseason, Matthew Knies has been the only figure free of the baggage that comes with elimination games being played in Toronto. Unwary of the demoralizing demons that come with a 3-1 series lead.

If anything, Knies has been part of the only prominent history the team has had over the last decade or so. Suiting up in times where the running joke of ‘it was 4-1’ cracks him up laughing rather than inflicting levels of emotional pain. Producing offensively in games that he and his team have no business in coming out on top of, yet frantically doing so - and reaping the momentum benefits from it.

This new era of Maple Leafs hockey has started with the presence of Knies in the lineup. Oblivious to the one-sided stats, unable to emotionally feel the world crumbling around him is a gift to a team that knows that feeling far too well.

Full of youth, inexperience and poise, Knies is the light the Leafs have been missing in times of darkness. Never in their recent history has Toronto had the luxury of throwing a player free of playoff paucity out on the ice in games begging for the crunch of the final dagger.

They do now, and maybe - just maybe - that inexperience will be the answer they’ve been searching for all this time.

Knies isn’t the past, nor does he carry the weight on his shoulders that comes with being a Maple Leaf in that treacherous timeline. The 2021 second-round pick is no longer just the future, but the changing present that he has, and will continue to play a role in as the playoffs inch onwards.

He may not be the hero or that thief in the night. He might even go pointless the rest of the way. The raw talent Knies possess makes these probabilities nearly impossible to fathom, but isn’t where his value as a player is measured.

Far from.

What Knies brings to this team is intangible and indispensable through a mid-season maneuver. In just a trio of games he has become irreplaceable. His energy reeks of juvenile inexperience, an aroma that over the years, has been beaten down by the smells of failure, fatigue and frustration throughout the Leafs dressing room.

Something smells different with this Maple Leafs team. What’s been left to brew over the last 24 hours looks and feels like something the organization has been missing since the early 2000’s, and has been chasing down ever since.

That pursuit may soon be over and Matthew Knies is only 20-years old.