Maple Leafs go big again, but don’t want to go home early in playoffs

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The Maple Leafs ordered another round of Tall Boys this year.

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Forwards Dakota Joshua (6-feet-3, 218 pounds) and Nicolas Roy (6-foot-4, 200) arrive in the wake of trade deadline defence acquisition Brandon Carlo (6-foot-5, 227). And if they make the team or the AHL Marlies, Michael Pezzetta (6-foot-1, 222), defenceman Henry Thrun (6-foot-2, 211) join two draft rounds under general manager Brad Treliving full of large lads.

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Onlookers must crane their necks when passing this gargantuan group in their skates as they change rinks at the Ford Performance Centre in the first days of training camp. It’s on display during battle drills that coach Craig Berube has featured to end an already intense practice, two or four Leafs scrapping to score inside a 20-foot radius on one net and goalie, placed in the faceoff circle towards the boards.

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What truly counts is whether the Tall Boys can beat the Wise Guys when it counts at playoff time, which Cup champion Florida and before that, the Boston Bruins did with a better mix of mass and mastery than the Leafs could muster.

The machinations of Sam Bennett, Matthew Tkachuk, Brad Marchand and the pitbull Panthers are the NHL’s gold standard of intimidation. Sure, the Leafs threw a scare into both foes for a couple of springs, but still couldn’t get past the second round.

Treliving and Berube won’t stop adding muscle to the arsenal as they prep for another post-season dress-rehearsal over the next six months. They’ve united Roy at third-line centre with Joshua on the left, setting up the returning fourth unit with Steven Lorentz and Scott Laughton.

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“Love the size,” Berube said of the Roy-Joshua on Thursday. “They can go against any line in the league, hold them down, check them, be physical and hard on them. They play similar games down low in the offensive zone.”

Ideally, the coach wants a degree of skill there, too. The duo surely isn’t stone-handed around the blue paint — Roy scoring in double figures his past four years in Vegas; Joshua with 35 over three shortened seasons with Vancouver — but Berube adds: “You need a guy who can actually make some plays and at times gets them the puck, too.”

That initial tryout goes to Easton Cowan, the coveted first-round draft pick, though it’s an unfamiliar role for him in a camp that will already test his survival instinct not to get run over by veteran foes when exhibition games begin this weekend.

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There is added punch on the Leafs’ first line, too, a healthy Auston Matthews, a beefier Matthew Knies, soon to be joined by Max Domi when his lower body pre-camp injury heals. Matthews, his nagging back soreness not an issue so far, seems to revel in those corner contacts at practice.

“You have size throughout, it doesn’t matter what line,” the captain said. “Roy and DJ are big bodies that can move, play heavy hockey. I’m really excited about the prospect of them filling in some big roles.”

Roy, Joshua and Thrun all come from Western Conference teams, a region once known as Land of the Giants compared to the skill-oriented East.

“The West across the board is heavier on average,” Thrun agreed. “Obviously a few teams are working towards that, such as us, being a heavy, mean playoff team.

“But there’s that competition everywhere. The league is moving to a big and fast direction. It’s only going to prove successful for us.”

We’ll have to see whether ‘the bigger they are, the harder they fall’ comes true in April.

Lhornby@postmedia.com

X: @sunhornby

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