TORONTO (Oct. 26) – It was a poignant scene that occurred beyond the range of cameras and microphones, and one that may not have been noticed by anyone other than the two people involved. But, it spoke volumes about the character of a veteran Maple Leaf whose star-crossed NHL career is now in limbo.
Carlo Colaiacovo can be excused if he occasionally wonders why fate has conspired against him since he turned professional more than six years ago. All this guy has done, it seems, is recover from one debilitating injury after another, while maintaining an outlook of optimism that belied his destiny. Having never played more than 48 games in a season, Colaiacovo again dedicated this past summer to exorcizing demons through the merit of hard work – only to watch helplessly as GM Cliff Fletcher enacted a 4:1 ratio of blue line acquisitions. Fletcher unloaded veteran Bryan McCabe, but acquired Mike Van Ryn, Jeff Finger and Jonas Frogren, while trading up in the draft to select Kelowna behemoth Luke Schenn – hardly the angling of a manager content with his corps of defensemen.
The upshot is that Colaiacovo is currently in a stretch where new coach Ron Wilson has deleted him from the line-up in four of the past five games. Yet, there he was – moments after the Maple Leafs’ 3-2 victory over Ottawa on Saturday night – waiting alone by the entrance to the dressing room. While his teammates whooped it up amid blaring rock music, Carlo quietly positioned himself to greet one of the players that have nudged him from active duty. When Schenn returned from taking his bows as first star of the match, Colaiacovo warmly put his arm around the rookie’s shoulder and escorted him to the main part of the room. It was an act of pure selflessness from a player that luck has forgotten over the years.
Back on Sep. 6, as part of a Q&A blog on this site, I was asked to predict the Leafs’ line-up for their Oct. 9 season opener in Detroit. This was before, a) Finger hurt his foot, and b) anyone began to seriously consider the concept of Schenn making the team as an 18-year-old [it was five days later – Sep. 11 – that Fletcher told a small media gathering at the Air Canada Centre Schenn would have to “blow us away” in order to start the season in the NHL]. As such, I chose Colaiacovo and Ian White to be the spare blue-liners for the Detroit game… not because either man was incapable of cracking the Leafs’ roster. It just seemed that the starting six positions had been pre-determined among incumbent players and the new faces.
Based on the way last season ended, it appeared obvious that Tomas Kaberle, Pavel Kubina and Anton Stralman had three spots under lock, and almost as obvious that Fletcher acquired Finger, Van Ryn and Frogren to play in the NHL. There’s your six. It turns out that Finger was on I-R to start the season and that Colaiacovo got the opening-night nod over Stralman. Schenn had the final spot based on a superb training camp. After a few games, however, my initial forecast began to take shape, and Colaiacovo joined White as a regular on the sideline.
White hasn’t seen a sniff of action in the first eight games, and it’s obvious the Leafs held onto him in the hopes that another team might suffer an early-season injury and require a puck-moving defenseman. That has yet to materialize, and Fletcher has chosen not to expose White to waivers because he’s convinced the blue-liner [and his $850,000 salary] would be an easy claim. Colaiacovo’s exclusion from the line-up is a bit more puzzling, as he wasn’t particularly awful in the few games he dressed for. But, it seems clear now that Fletcher made his three acquisitions over the summer because neither he nor Wilson felt that Colaiacovo or White could crack the top six on defense.
This is especially disappointing for Carlo, given the number of times he has bounced up off the mat in his young career. His injury log reads like something out of a Vietnam chronicle – more so in the past three years. Who can ever forget the horrifying concussion he suffered while crashing, face-first, into the boards at Ottawa in January, 2006? It cost him the remaining 34 games of that season, and the first 31 of 2006-07. In May of ’07, Colaiacovo underwent arthroscopic surgery to repair a torn patellar tendon. Unanticipated soreness from that procedure behind his knee held him out of the Leafs’ line-up for the first 37 games of last season. He returned in late-December and suffered a bruised knee in a Jan. 5 game at Philadelphia, sidelining him for nine more games. Another brief spurt of health ended when a groin-muscle tear on Mar. 18 in Uniondale, N.Y. finished him for the final eight games of the schedule.
Through it all, Carlo has maintained a remarkable sense of purpose and self-assurance. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I, personally, have given him an opportunity to say “Woe is me”, and the same applies to most of my reporting colleagues. Yet, he has steadfastly refused to feel sorry for himself, and has always expressed the belief that his time would come. Now it seems that time will not happen for him in a Leafs’ uniform. Carlo is a veteran of more than 100 NHL games, but he currently finds himself – with White – among an excess trio of defensemen consigned to the press box [Frogren was scratched against Ottawa to make room for Finger].
That’s why Colaiacovo’s inconspicuous, post-game greeting of Schenn on Saturday was so remarkable to watch. It proved the quality of teammate he is, and how mature he has grown through the years. It also, in my mind, proves him worthy of special consideration from Fletcher. If his time as a starting defenseman is indeed up here in Toronto, Carlo has earned the right to a fresh beginning elsewhere. He’s held his head up during all of the hard times and deserves to be treated as more than just a convenient spare part.
A hockey observer in this city with any compassion should wish for him to land on his feet in a better circumstance. Though the NHL has always been a business, first, Fletcher is a hockey man with compassion. Let’s see how that amalgam plays itself out.
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