Can Nazem Kadri do anything right?

Look, I admit I’m as confused as the next guy when it comes to how the Maple Leaf organization has dealt with prized (?) prospect Nazem Kadri.  From the day he was drafted in the summer of 2009, Leaf fans have had been a virtual obsession with him—and around when the young forward would be ready to start making a consistent contribution to the big club.

I won’t go on and on (at least I’ll try not to), but suffice to say I have mentioned in this space on more than one occasion that I have not liked—at all—the way the Leafs have handled Kadri from the get-go.

Oddly, it almost seemed to surprise people (and even Kadri) when he was sent back to junior after his first camp—though the 18-year old was clearly not ready to play for the Leafs.

Still, when he was called up to play one game that season, everyone’s eyes were on him.  The assumption was that—albeit as an emergency recall only—if he was good enough to get the call to play an NHL game, surely he would be with the Leafs the next season.

But what we were seeing was just the beginning of the yo-yo approach that the Leafs were to employ, including during the 2010-’11 NHL season.  He quite properly (despite a productive game against the Senators late in pre-season) started the season with the Marlies, where he belonged.  But amazingly (and somewhat stupidly) he was called up in the fall of 2010 to trigger some offensive production—at a time when he wasn’t even playing that well with the Marlies, if I remember correctly.  However, the Leafs weren’t scoring at the time and they looked to Kadri to get them going.  Regardless of whether he looked like Mike Bossy (which he didn’t) at the time with the Marlies, the notion that he would be the much-needed offensive catalyst just demonstrated how lacking the Leafs were in offensive ammunition at the time.

And it represented a sign of weakness of thought—and a bit of desperation—on the part of management.

Not surprisingly, after some nice early returns, Kadri cooled off and was soon headed back to the minors.  We kept hearing how he had to stop giving the puck away, that he really wasn’t ready after all for NHL play.  This was after we had been told at training camp that he needed to get bigger, stronger and faster—like just about every prospect out there at the age of 18, 19 and 20. Yet he was called up and shuffled back to the Marlies. (Sadly, this is now the fourth camp in a row where we keep hearing different versions of the same message about Kadri...)

I was so frustrated watching this unfold.  As I had said here many times, I just wanted Kadri to play and stay with the Marlies all season long in 2010-’11.  Learn the pro game, get better, get comfortable—and get confident.  (All that stuff we always say- but it makes sense.)

On the "confidence" question:  the young man has always sounded confident when he speaks.  That’s great.  He almost always has said the right things about wanting to learn to become a pro.  But I’m talking about the confidence that a player has not only when he knows what he’s doing on the ice but also when he is not playing with doubt—or afraid that every mistake will be scrutinized by the coaching staff and management and inevitably lead to a seat on the bench or worse, up in the press box.

Last year at this time, Kadri was seemingly going to make the team, but a late training camp injury killed his chances and Matt Frattin took advantage to assure himself of a roster spot.

Meanwhile, Kadri, earned some call-ups to the Leafs but  spent a good chunk of last season with the Marlies again, not exactly setting the league on fire, but playing well a fair bit of the time.  He showed a slightly more physical side to his game at that level, though he is not exactly a bruiser.

In any event, until a couple of days ago, the last we had really heard from the soon-to-be 22 year-old Kadri is that he had been working out “all” (?) summer with former Maple Leaf winger and current   nutrition, health and fitness guru Gary Roberts.  I assumed, based on everything I had heard, that Kadri was sculpted, a chiseled boy-man that—at least in terms of his physical appearance—would turn heads at Leaf (now Marlies, given the lockout) camp this September.

Instead, what was the first-day camp storyline?

Well,  we heard the well-regarded Marlies coach, Dallas Eakins, speak at length about Kadri.  While measured and calm, he spoke firmly and directly about the fact that Kadri was in the lower tier of Marlies when they were assessed in terms of body fat, I think it was.  (Glad I wasn’t tested…)

The first thing I thought was…hmmm.  Wasn’t Kadri with Gary Roberts all summer?  Was that something I had dreamt?

Then I began to wonder…why is Eakins being so specific and so harsh-sounding (again, while speaking calmly) about, of all people, Kadri?  Do we really need to know that the kid is in the lower three guys on the team or whatever it is in terms of his conditioning?

Why is the organization (and this smacks of a directive from Burke or Carlyle) so hell-bent on making Kadri’s life miserable here?

Like, what is really going on here?

I get tough love and all that.  That you have to "earn" the sweater.  (Though I've been watching a lot of Leaf hockey the last four years and well, for all the "entitlement"  and "blue and white disease" talk, I'm not sure every guy I see out there has always "earned" his jersey, but anyway...)  Usually a coach is hard on you when he sees you have more to give and he wants you to excel, to be the best you can be.  We all understand that.

But sometimes, well sometimes I just don’t know.  Didn’t we all figure that Kadri, unlike Schenn who was drafted by Fletcher, was Burke’s guy, given that Kadri was his first first-round draft choice as General Manager of the Maple Leafs?  Didn't we kind of anticipate  that Burke would move heaven and other to make sure Kadri made it?  Yes he’d have to fight for it, but it seems as though the young man has done a lot of what he has been asked to do by the organization.

Yet every fall—and I mean every single training camp—we keep hearing about all the things Kadri is doing wrong, the things he needs to work on, that he is not in shape, or not in the right kind of shape, and now that he eats the wrong things, despite being on a Gary Roberts diet.

Hey, Kadri is still young- very young.  I know there is always a debate when you see players drafted after him who are maybe having quicker success at the NHL level, like perhaps a Zack Kassian. But in truth, most of those first-rounders from that draft year who have stood out were selected before Kadri.

I don’t know if the Leafs believe in him and are simply making him the poster boy for the supposed “every game is a try-out” thing, or are simply growing increasingly frustrated by the fact that he has not, evidently, made that massive jump that you sometimes see young players take in their career.

My though has long been that a) Kadri needed extensive seasoning, for lack of a better word, in the minors.  Surely he has had that by now, though the lockout means that education will continue this season under Eakins. But I also believe that b) at some point, when he is given a chance in the Leaf line-up, it has to be a real chance.  By that I mean not just two or thee games.  Or being moved (as we saw in 2010-’11 in his first call up) from the first line eventually to the third or fourth line or from the power-play to the bench (and then the minors) if he gives the puck away once or twice or fails to put up big numbers.

And on a related note, is he a center?  A winger?  I still don’t know.

So I say, let him play.  Just let him play.  Once he "makes" the Leaf line-up, keep him there.

Just like I talked here often about the numbing effect Allaire must have had (and I was saying this years before the shit hit the fan in the last few weeks) on someone like Gustavsson, who looked like a Stepford goalie by the time Allaire had "tutored" him, I don’t want the organization to crush Kadri.

With Kadri, we need to understand that he is not Mats Sundin, or Doug Gilmour.  He is a young player with plenty of flaws, but someone that the Leafs should be building up rather than tearing down.  He has vision.  He has hands.  He has moves.  He can make plays.  Let him do what he is good at.  Don’t ignore his flaws, of course.  Stay on him but don’t make him so wary of errors that he loses his instincts and ability to create on the fly.

I’ve said here many times that Kadri, in my view, has been “out there” in trade talks for ages.  I firmly believe he was in a number of packages that would have brought Leafs “name” players over the past few years (Nash, Luongo, Bobby Ryan, etc.) but for a number of reasons, those deals never came to pass.

I don’t know if the Leafs love Kadri, or feel stuck with him.

Whatever, I wouldn’t have minded a little white lie from Eakins’ lips in talking about Kadri on the weekend.  Rather than, “He’s in the bottom three…” in terms of conditioning, just day, “He looks fine.  Ready to go.  We know he can play and we think he’ll show us….”

So count me as puzzled.

Your thoughts?