Mark “Snowshoes” Fraser evokes memories of some old-time Maple Leafs

I admit it:  sometimes, as I've been watching watching the Leafs this season, I’ve wondered why Mark Fraser is with the big club.  I mean, I understand that the guy has a big heart and all that, but in an era where speed, puck movement and the transition game are so important, he seems like, well, a throwback. And an out-of-place throwback at that.

Yet I have to admit something else:  the more I've watched and focused on him, trying to find  legitimate reasons why he shouldn't be here, I’ve actually started to accumulate a checklist in my mind as to why he has been a contributor to the relative Leaf success so far this season (if we can call a  record of 8 wins and 5 losses this early in a season a "success"- and I think, under the circumstances, we can).

I'm not very good at making cocktails, and in hockey terms, this particular cocktail- a mix of a slow-footed defenseman in a high-speed game- just seemed like a bad mix to me.  I thought it was a nice gesture, you know, to promote a hard-working Marlie and all that.  But I also assumed that by this point in the season (well before now, actually), Jake Gardiner would be in his "rightful" place on the blueline, (not to mention Gunnarsson upon his return) and Fraser would be back toiling for the Marlies.

How off-base I was. (I did not include him in my write-up yesterday as one of the key Leaf contributors, because I knew I would post about him today...)

So why is this guy here?  Well, he minimizes his mistakes, which is important for any defenseman. While I would hardly call him offensively gifted, there he was a few games back, holding on to the puck, making a little fake, before finding Franson for an important goal.  But way more significant than his limited offensive contributions, he is a defender first and a defenseman that, despite being slow afoot, makes his presence felt.  He seems to have his angles down pretty well.  (He has to, given his lack of foot speed.) And as I've witnessed in recent games especially, he seems to wait until just the right moment before he eliminates his man from the play and pins him against the boards—and he seems to relish doing it with authority.

Look, I admit (there’s that word again) that my view is a fragile one, and it could change pretty quickly—I reserve that right as a lifelong Leaf fan—but the guy has shown me something.  Obviously Randy Carlyle caught on before I did.  And that Fraser is somehow +11 with only one point to his credit while playing more than 12 minutes a night just adds to his somewhat unique storyline this season.

Not to make comparisons just for the sake of it, but Fraser has kind of brought back memories of a couple of former Leafs of my youth—Allan Stanley and Bobby Baun.

Stanley (right, fighting for possession of the puck in late '50s action at the Forum against Montreal great Jean Beliveau) was traded to the Leafs at the beginning of the 1958-’59 season, after having played, I believe, for every U.S. based team at the time in the NHL except Detroit (Chicago, Boston and New York) in those glorious pre-expansion days.  But his time in Toronto ultimately made him a Hall-of-Famer, though he was a fine player before he ever got here.  The hardly-fleet-of-foot Stanley (he was nicknamed “Snowshoes” because of his rather awkward and slow skating style) partnered beautifully with Tim Horton, the flashier, speedier, hard-shooting future donut magnate, who, like Stanley, went on to become a Hall-of-Fame player.

But what really set Stanley apart, in my view, was ‘angles’.  He knew opposing players, knew how to position himself and knew how to keep himself (legally) between the man and the puck.  He didn’t have a big shot, or big offensive stats; he was a smart, he got where he needed to go through anticipation, timing and, again, playing angles superbly.

For his part, Baun was nicknamed “Boomer”, because he could (and did) deliver  thundering, old-time, open-ice body checks. (Chicago’s Bobby Hull was a guy our Bobby particularly liked to hammer…)  Like Stanley, Baun also teamed with a higher-profile, more offensively talented partner in Carl Brewer.  But Baun, like Stanley, was one of the backbone players who helped make the Leafs champions four times in the 1960s.

Those were different times, and it was a different era, of course.  Baun and Stanley played the bulk of their careers whern most teams utilized only four defensemen on a regular basis.  There were, until 1967, only six teams in the NHL.  While there were fast teams (Chicago and Montreal in the early ‘60s) and speedy players, the game was much slower-paced, no question, than what we see today.  There was plenty of room for players who weren’t speedsters as long as they brought other things to the table.

To suggest Fraser is in the same league as Stanley or Baun would be a lofty comparison, and I’m not suggesting Fraser is.  But in a day and age when I wouldn’t think a defenseman with Fraser’s limitations would be an NHL regular, he has shown he is a capable guy who is helping the Leafs.  And he deserves some credit.

Throw in the fact that the former New Jersey Devil (evidently tutored by the likes of former Montreal great Larry Robinson, a coach with the Devils at the time)  presents as a genuinely nice guy and well, it's OK to admit that, just maybe, I was wrong.