LEAFS NOTES: Experiencing a long-distance draft, and a new job for Rick Vaive

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The Maple Leafs’ first 2025 draft pick, whoever he is and which day of the draft he is announced, likely will be 4,000 kilometres away from his new team when chosen.

But Toronto’s hockey department, working out of their Ford Performance Centre office this Friday and Saturday, won’t be alone with any separation anxiety in this de-centralized draft. Most other teams will be at home bases, while 100 or so prospects are gathered with commissioner Gary Bettman at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.

While Leafs amateur scouting director Mark Leach told the Toronto Sun last week that things should go smoothly, given ‘COVID’ drafts in 2020 and 2021 had to be virtual, all teams and the viewing public will have to manage some technical challenges of being scattered across the continent.

“We thought this would be simpler, and it’s actually become way more complicated,” Steve Mayer, league president of content and events, told the Associated Press this week as he monitored the L.A. set. “Everything has to be spot on. It was so much easier when you can look at (draft) table No. 6 and they were making their pick.”

The first 32 players will be chosen Friday night. Toronto’s first-round pick is owned by Chicago from the Jake McCabe trade two years ago, meaning it won’t pick Friday unless trading up, and is currently up 64th at the end of Saturday’s second round.

SAINTLY REVIVAL FOR RICK

In the 1980s, Rick Vaive and other Leafs were familiar with coach John Brophy’s stark description of being sent down the QEW in St. Catharines with the American Hockey League Saints.

“It’s 75 miles to get there and 75,000 miles back,” the late Brophy would direly warn the players, hoping to motivate them to fight harder for jobs with the parent team.

Now it’s the 66-year-old Vaive who will be coaching where Brophy once did in St. Kitts, with the newly created senior Saints of the Allan Cup Hockey League. This will be a more player-friendly, a five-team league with roster ages in the late 20s and early 30s.

Vaive has been bitten by the coaching bug again. After AHL and ECHL jobs, the one-time Leafs captain last ran a bench in 2001 with the OHL’s Mississauga IceDogs.

“This just came up and I remembered how I loved doing it,” Vaive said. “I’m starting from scratch, but I still love working with players. They have day jobs and we’ll practice just once a week. And it could lead to something else for me, who knows.”

Vaive was impressed with St. Catharines owner Pat Smith’s plans to renovate Bill Burgoyne Arena, which currently holds close to 1,000 spectators, and his plans to recruit local Niagara Peninsula hockey talent at October’s training camp. Vaive, who lives in the area, agrees his NHL fame won’t hurt in attracting other free agents.

Four other teams in the league are the Dundas Real McCoys (Vaive and other retired Leafs played for them), Stoney Creek Tigers, Wentworth Gryphins and Cambridge Hornets. As the name suggests, the league playoff champion will go on to compete against other top clubs across Canada for the Allan Cup, the country’s senior amateur trophy since 1909. It was won last season by Wentworth, which had former NHLer Cory Conacher on the team.

SBA CONSTRUCTION UPDATE

With the Leafs announcing their six-pack of exhibition games on Wednesday, home-and-home with Ottawa, Montreal and Detroit, the third year of the $350 million upgrade to Scotiabank Arena is proceeding and should not affect opening night in October or beyond.

“The 300 level renovation project is on schedule and areas due to be completed on time for the start of the season will be done,” an MLSE spokesman said. “Like last year’s renovation of the 100 level concourse, renovations will continue through the season, but won’t impact the event schedule.”

MATT MARTIN MOVES ON

Winger Matt Martin, who played two seasons with the Leafs among more than 1,000 games as a New York Islander, announced his retirement this week.

Martin signed with Toronto in the summer of 2016, his job to “keep the flies away” from young stars Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander in the words of then-coach Mike Babcock. Martin had 21 points and 173 penalty minutes before returning to the Island, part of a well-regarded fourth line in the league with Casey Cizikas and Cal Clutterbuck.

The 36-year-old Martin will take an advisory role with new Isles general manager Mathieu Darche.

LOOSE LEAFS

Though they’re not lifetime Leafs, this week’s inductees Alex Mogilny and Joe Thornton represent the 63rd and 64th Toronto players to be named to the Hall of Fame … Mogilny is the most recent of four NHL players to share the record of a goal five seconds into a game — while playing for Buffalo against the Leafs in 1991 … Former Leafs assistant coach Manny Malhotra’s Abbotsford Canucks won the AHL’s Calder Cup against Charlotte this week …  Ex-Leaf and Marlie captain Rich Clune has changed his assistant coaching address from Anaheim to rejoining GM Kyle Dubas in Pittsburgh under new head coach Dan Muse … It was 16 years ago Thursday that the Leafs drafted London Knights centre Nazem Kadri seventh overall, to a chorus of boos at the Bell Centre in Montreal.

Lhornby@postmedia.com

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