Kallgren next man up as Leafs try to fill gaping hole in goal

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After his great coming out on Thursday night, new Maple Leafs goalie Erik Kallgren was asked what he’d been thinking as he went into the game in the middle of a blowout.

“Not much, to be honest,” Kallgren said.

Kallgren laughed at his own joke. But even mid-laugh, you could see the gears starting to grind. Hey, what was I thinking about? How do I do that again? Can I do that again?

Kallgren is a lightly touted Swedish prospect who’s already in his mid-20s. He hasn’t made a dent in the NHL. People worried about the shallowness of Jack Campbell’s résumé when he arrived in Toronto. Kallgren’s CV makes Jack Campbell from two years ago look like Jacques Plante.

But by the end of Thursday’s game against Arizona, Kallgren was the hot tip to be the next Leafs’ starting goalie.

What incredible thing did he do? In 30 minutes of one game, he didn’t let in any goals he shouldn’t have. That’s the bar now. Toronto still lost.

At the moment, we should stop referring to the Leafs as one whole. They are two distinct teams.

Offensively, they are an unstoppable force.

Defensively, they are an immovable object. Like a pylon or a bollard. Unless they get moving in the crease, and then they are an unstoppable force headed for the side boards as the puck heads toward the net.

The positive way of looking at this is that the Leafs have become the most exciting team in the NHL. No lead can be tolerated to exist in their vicinity, neither for nor against.

The other way to look at it is that they are exciting the way a motorbike entering a speed wobble is exciting. No telling how long it will last, but it definitely ends up in the ER.

The usual pattern here is to start yelling at general manager Kyle Dubas. This must be his fault. Did he lose his pocket calculator or something? Why didn’t the math tell him this would happen?

But the current issue isn’t roster-, skills- or cap-related, or not entirely. It is instead the mighty power of the Toronto hockey market to get inside people’s heads and start lighting fires.

Campbell was the Leafs’ goaltending answer until he made the mistake of being too good, too often. That caused a lot of people to tell Campbell he was the answer. The led Campbell to begin thinking about whether he really was the answer. Soon after that, he wasn’t the answer any more.

There have been moments this calendar year where you have to marvel at Campbell’s ability to get out of the way of the puck. Olympic gymnasts can’t move that way. Some nights, you’d probably be better in net because you’d just stand there like a life-size ventriloquist’s dummy letting the puck do all the work.

A month after it might have done some good, Campbell was injured this week. That gave Petr Mrazek his chance on Thursday night.

Mrazek was acquired in the off-season to push Campbell. He’s the Army Surplus of goalies. You wanted Patagonia, but you can’t afford it. So you buy Army Surplus instead.

Mrazek’s résumé suggested he’d be a serviceable No. 2. Semi-decent runs in Detroit and, especially, Carolina. Not the sort to give up too many crooked numbers.

But what Toronto should have factored in was that Mrazek was not, by rule, allowed to play for the Leafs in Raleigh. He’d actually have to come to Canada and play in front of the most cynical fanbase in the league.

Whether it’s the city, the history, or the fact that reporters actually talk to you up here, Mrazek has been a mess. But all he had done before is nothing to what he wrought in five minutes on Thursday.

After two minutes, he tried punching a puck out of the air and instead passed it to an Arizona Coyote on the other side of the zone. 1-0.

A couple of minutes later, he wakeboarded so far outside his crease that he was playing centre. 2-0.

Most comical goals are mental blips. But some are the sort they teach in the PhD program at Clown College. Mrazek was working at the latter level of comedic ambition.

Afterward, Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe was given the chance to say something vaguely supportive about his goalie.

“Yeah, it’s tough,” Keefe said. “Nothing else to say. It’s tough.”

It was the tone more than it was the words. Keefe sounded like he was talking about an HVAC guy who’d come in to change a filter and ended up burning down the house.

Whether or not he meant to do so, Mrazek gave his notice as a Maple Leaf on Thursday night. Because of contractual obligations, it might be 120-odd weeks of notice, but there’s no coming back from that vote of non-confidence.

So welcome home Erik Kallgren. We hope that right now someone is waving an industrial magnet around your head so that you will be coming off the bench for the first time forever and ever. Mind control may be the only way to keep any Leafs goalie on track.

Toronto is in little danger of slipping out of the playoffs, but it is in real danger of slipping in. As it currently stands, Tampa’s the first playoff series up. Then it’s probably the Panthers. Both of those teams have actual goalies playing in front of audiences who don’t know the difference between a kick save and a kick stand. Advantage: Florida.

There’s still a week or so left to trade for a better option. But if the expectations of any Toronto goalie are always too high, they are currently sub-orbital. If a new, new, new guy doesn’t work out, then what? Go back to Campbell?

Here’s a suggestion – get rid of the goalie altogether. Play six-on-five the whole game. Get Kyle Clifford to stand in the crease yelling threats at the opposing bench. Win every game 20-18.

Or just pick one guy and stop talking about it.

It’s not finding the guy that’s so hard, or even maintaining the silence. In this town, the difficult part is convincing the guy you picked to stop talking to himself.