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nhl maple leafs

At this time of year, hockey is all about lists.

Most improved NHL team, who's new, who's gone and coach most likely to be fired.

Just one name is found in the latter category of every list – Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Randy Carlyle. After the Maple Leafs' latest late-season collapse last spring, Carlyle managed to hang on to his job because it appeared new Leaf president Brendan Shanahan could not find or sign a new coach that appealed to him. But Carlyle was given the lukewarm gesture of essentially a one-year contract extension and the definitely cold gesture of having three of his assistant coaches fired.

If ever an NHL head coach was set up to be fired if his team stumbles out of the gate, it was Carlyle. Here, he was told, make the team better real quick but without the coaches you trust.

Then on the eve of training camp, this being Toronto where any conversation anywhere that involves someone connected with the Leafs can explode into a media storm without warning, Carlyle suddenly had two huge issues to deal with that had nothing to do with who is going to kill penalties this season or provide the Leafs with some backbone.

First, outgoing Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment president and chief executive officer Tim Leiweke made some remarks to a group of Ryerson University students that gave the impression the team believed one of its star players lacked toughness of character. Naturally, most jumped to the conclusion Leiweke must have been talking about the famously laconic Phil Kessel even though no name was mentioned nor even a team.

Then, on the first official day of training camp but before anyone hit the ice, The Toronto Star reported one of Carlyle's new assistant coaches, Steve Spott, made the rookie mistake of telling a group of minor-hockey coaches about a debate he had with a reluctant Kessel over a new breakout scheme, among other things. Spott may or may not have been joking when he was said to have added the information Kessel "hates" his coaches but management is inclined to coddle him.

That was the conflagration du jour that greeted Carlyle on Thursday. But rather than rail, say, that only in Toronto could a newspaper columnist have a kid whose hockey coach attends clinics with NHL coaches, Carlyle handled the hubbub with grace.

"Are you warmed up?" he said with a big grin after following Leafs general manager David Nonis to the podium at the opening press conference, knowing full well what was coming.

A couple of days earlier, Carlyle admitted to a Toronto Sun columnist that dealing with Leiweke's comments "doesn't make it easier." The answer, though, Carlyle said Thursday, is to move on quickly.

"I just look at it and say, 'Hey, my focus is today, to get the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey club prepared for this season,' " he said. "All those things are things that have gone by and our focus should be on what we have to do today."

When it comes to the distraction of the day that rages on social and conventional media, Carlyle said, he looks at dealing with it as just one more task to tick off his to-do list.

"I think what's next? Next!" he said.

That applies to all that talk that he will be fired if the Leafs win any less than 10 of their first 20 games.

"As I said before, coaching in the NHL, you're under a microscope," Carlyle said. "In this market it might be a bigger microscope.

"You're always going to be challenged on whether you're going to be able to sell your product or what you're selling your players are buying. That's the issue."

It certainly was the issue last season when Carlyle could not convince Kessel and his high-flying teammates to pay more attention to defence and puck possession. Management did help Carlyle in that regard by bringing in players like Stephane Robidas, Daniel Winnick and Leo Komarov who can raise the team's compete level but the coach still has to close the sale with stars like Kessel and James van Riemsdyk.

But in the end Carlyle's fate will rest more with Jonathan Bernier than with Kessel. If the Leafs goaltender plays the way he did last season and stays healthy then Carlyle has a much better chance of being hailed as the old-school guy who learned new ways to win.

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