Morgan Rielly & John Tavares Signed My Lightsaber, and Other Thoughts on the Leafs Season So Far
Some fun encounters at the outdoor practice have me looking back, and ahead, at the Toronto Maple Leafs season so far...
“Hey Morgan, ever signed a lightsaber before?”
I certainly didn’t expect that if I ever met Toronto Maple Leaf’s defenceman Morgan Rielly those would be the first words out of my mouth. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely should have. I’ve always had a penchant for combining my favourite things, and there are few things I enjoy more than Star Wars and the Toronto Maple Leafs.
So really, it was very “on brand” for me to bring a lightsaber to the Leafs’ outdoor practice at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto this past Sunday morning.
I always relish any opportunity to see the Maple Leafs play live and this Sunday was no exception. My initial plan was just to head down to city hall and watch the practice from the bleachers, but then I reached out to my friend Dan Johnson (co-founder of the Order 416 costume club) to see if he was going.
Dan is a big-time autograph collector and has a unique ability to track down signatures. So when he said he was going, he told me to be ready early because we were hunting signatures.
I wouldn’t call myself an autograph hunter by any stretch although I have picked up a fair few signatures over the years, either at conventions or as gifts, mainly from voice actors and bit players in the Star Wars films and TV shows. So I was game to go along for the experience, plus I was excited by the idea of adding a few hockey signatures to my Star Wars-centric collection.
I began wondering what I should bring to have the players sign. I haven’t bought hockey cards in well over a decade, and the idea of getting a jersey signed terrifies me (I like to wear my jerseys and the last thing I want to do is get one signed and then spill BBQ sauce on it). I began to scrounge up some pucks from when I used to play when a thought hit me,
I bet Auston Matthews has never signed a lightsaber.
I quickly remembered that Auston wouldn’t be there due to an injury that had kept him out of the lineup since before the All-Star break, but the idea stuck. I then remembered the famous (or infamous if you’re from Long Island) “pyjama boy” picture John Tavares posted when he signed with the Leafs on July 1st, 2018. It’s a photograph from John’s childhood of him sleeping in his Toronto Maple Leafs PJs, presumably dreaming of playing for his favourite team. What had stood out to me, however, was the Naboo N-1 Starfighter alarm clock perched above his head.
There was no turning back now. Even as I tried to come up with every excuse not to do it (what if security had an issue with the replica—science fiction—weapon? Or the players thought it was too nerdy? What if it got broken? Or worse, someone stole it?), I knew what I had to do. As the saying goes, you can’t kill an idea.
So bright and early on Sunday morning, I packed up my lightsaber—the one I built at Savi’s Workshop in Galaxy’s Edge back in 2019—and headed downtown.
A Jedi Uses The Force For Knowledge And Defence
There were two opportunities to get autographs. When the players first arrived at Nathan Philips Square, and after practice as they made their way back to the team bus.
During their first pass, I kept my sabre in its carrying case (basically a glorified poster tube). In the initial rush of excitement at seeing the Leafs so up close and personal, I felt all the doubts about the idea creeping back in. So instead of holding out the sabre, I reached for the pucks that I’d brought as a backup.
Don’t get me wrong, I was still thrilled with the outcome. Over the past two years, I’ve become a big fan of third-line centre David Kampf. So I was ecstatic to get his signature on a Leafs’ puck I got for Christmas in about 2005. And I grabbed Scarborough’s favourite pest, Michael Bunting on another one. If that was all I’d left with, I would have considered it a good day.
While the team practiced, however, I had some time to think. I decided that since I’d brought the sabre all this way, I had to at least try to get one of the players to sign it. The worst that could happen now is that they’d say no. So I took the sabre out of its carrying case.
Morgan Rielly was one of the first players to hit the autograph line. As he began signing, I held out the lightsaber hilt, and called out to him,
“Hey, Morgan! Ever signed a lightsaber before?”
He looked over at me and replied, “No.”
“Wanna?”
“Yeah!”
He made his way over and took the hilt from me. As he tried to figure out where the best place to sign it was, I babbled on about how I built the sabre at Disneyland (I still haven’t figured out what exactly you’re supposed to say to celebrities while they sign something for you). Once he signed it, he was about to hand it back when he asked,
“Is it real?”
“Yeah,” I replied, “wanna see?”
“Of course.”
I had decided during the practice that it would be easier to just have the hilt out for signatures and had therefore left the light-up blade in the holder. So when Morgan asked to see the sabre in action, I had to rush to pull the blade out of the holder, fumbling around a little more than I would have liked to, leaving the hilt in the Leafs’ D-man’s possession.
Once I finally got the blade out, I plugged it into the hilt and flicked the ignition switch. And I saw on Morgan’s face the childlike joy of holding a “real” lightsaber. There are few better feelings.
He waved the sabre around a couple of times, to the joy of the crowd, and then leaned in for a selfie with me in which he was still gripping the sabre. It’s hard to tell which of us was more excited.
Once the picture was taken, he handed the sabre back to me and continued to sign for the other thousands of fans who’d come out to see the team that morning.
I took a moment to bask in the joy of what had just happened, thrilled by this short interaction with one of my favourites. But the crush of the crowd quickly snapped me back to attention. Because coming down the line was the former-owner-of-a-Naboo-N1-Starfighter-alarm-clock himself, John Tavares.
As the captain of the team, and someone whose been known to hockey fans since he was a teenager for his record-breaking play in the OHL and World Junior’s heroics, Tavares was one of the most popular signers that day. And, ever the professional, he was determined to sign for as many people as possible.
I held out the sabre again, blade still in place this time, and called out again.
“Hey, Johnny! Ever signed a lightsaber?”
He was completely unphased, signing it as though he’s signed a million lightsabers before. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if he had. He’s a true Jedi Master.
BeLeaf Is A Dangerous Thing
It’s become the fashionable thing to say that this Leaf’s regular season doesn’t matter, that the only thing worth watching is the playoffs. It’s an understandable sentiment. Twice since 2017, the Leafs have set a team record for most points in the regular season, not to mention the individual regular season awards that Auston Matthews has picked up in that time (including back-to-back Rocket Richard trophies for most goals in the regular season in 2020-21 and 2021-22).
And yet, the team still hasn’t won a playoff series in that time.
But allow me to be unfashionable for a moment and say that I’ve had a lot of fun watching this season. Not all of it, of course. There have been ups and downs (the loss to last-place Columbus the night before the outdoor practice was especially egregious), but by and large, the season has been a lot of fun.
While Auston Matthews almost certainly won’t threepeat on the Rocket Richard award, Mitch Marner did go on a crazy 23-game point streak earlier in the season, and William Nylander could very well score 50 goals this season. Not to mention Tavares having a bit of a scoring resurgence too.
Even the goaltending, which was one of the biggest question marks heading into the season, has been solid. Things looked shaky at the start when both Matt Murray and Ilya Samsonov were hurt, leaving third-stringer Erik Källgren to hold down the fort. But the two eventually returned and have both shown flashes of brilliance, with Samsonov looking poised to claim the crease as starting goalie heading into the postseason.
And the way Samsonov plays has been a lot of fun. I was lucky enough to be at the game on January 23rd against the New York Islanders when he picked up an assist on a power play goal by John Tavares. Instead of waiting for a Leafs’ skater to come and retrieve an iced puck like normal, allowing the Islanders to change their penalty killers, Samsonov retrieved the puck himself and then fired it down the ice to the offensive blue line. There, Nylander deflected it onto Tavares' stick, who then fired it into the back of the net. It’s the only time I can remember the player who got the secondary assist getting a louder cheer than the goal scorer.
Before the season started, I wrote that I wanted the Leafs to embrace their position as the villains of the NHL, just as the New York Yankees do in baseball. The way best to do this, I thought, would be to ruin the Boston Bruins’ “last dance” season by eliminating them in the playoffs. At the time, I didn’t know just how magical the Bruins’ last dance would be. The Bruins practically locked away first place in the league halfway through the season. As such, the path to the Stanley Cup will almost certainly go through Beantown.
For the Leafs, such a match-up would likely come in the second round. This, of course, assumes they win their first-round series. And if the last six years have taught us anything it’s that that is far from a safe assumption. Especially since the first round will most likely feature another familiar foe.
Deja-Vu All Over Again
Adding to the regular season malaise that some Leafs’ fans are feeling is that their probable first-round opponent has been known for quite some time. With Boston running away with the league, that’s left two teams battling for second place in the Atlantic Division: The Leafs, and a team that’s played in the Stanley Cup final three years in a row (winning two). The same team that eliminated them in the heart-breaking seven-game first-round series last spring: The Tampa Bay Lightning.
As legendary catcher Yogi Berra put it, “It's like déjà vu all over again.”
Home-ice advantage is practically a coin-flip at this point. The teams are currently tied in the standings, but the Lightning have a game at hand over the Leafs so they could easily grab hold of it before the season is done.
But does home ice really matter? The Leafs have had home-ice advantage in all their series since 2018 (including the ultimate home-ice advantage against Columbus in 2020, being literally the only team in the Eastern Conference playing in their home arena), and it hasn’t helped them. They had chances to eliminate Boston, Columbus, Montreal, and Tampa at home and came up short each time.
So while I want to see the Leafs win as many games as possible through the last two months of the season, I’m not going to worry too much if four out of seven games this April wind up being played in Florida (and you just know the series is going to go seven games).
I’m also not going to pretend like I know what the solution is for this team to get out of the first round. I have no idea what general manager Kyle Dubas should do at the trade deadline next month. I like some of the names that keep getting floated like Jakob Chychrun and Timo Meier, but I don’t know who they should give up to get them or how they can make those deals work under the salary cap.
What I do know is that, regardless of the “pointless” nature of it, this season has been a lot of fun. I’ve loved watching the goal-scoring machines Auston Matthews and William Nylander, and the playmaking wizardry of Mitch Marner. I’ve really enjoyed the defensive prowess of our third-line centre, and the pesty-ness of one of Scarborough’s favourite sons. It’s been a thrill to have a goalie that knows how to rack up a few assists. And leading the way have been a pair of Jedi Masters, John Tavares and Morgan Rielly.
This season’s been a hell of a ride so far, I’m just hoping we arrive at a different destination this time.
Maybe with a little beLeaf, and some help from the Force, we’ll get there.