That back-and-forth was about as awkward as you might expect, with Kapanen veering from emotional to combative while fielding multiple questions on his tardiness.
“Listen guys if you guys want to talk about hockey I’m all for it,” he said at one point. “So talk about today or the future, that’s fine. But I overslept and that’s that.”
Except the entire situation hardly feels open and shut.
For starters, there was really no unified front or consistent messaging on how things escalated to this point.
Kapanen’s very public punishment is obviously the cumulative result of previous transgressions, but it’s not clear what those were — with the player copping to having “missed or been late to practice a couple times” during his days in the American Hockey League and Keefe, his former Marlies coach, saying he had no recollection of that happening.
Instead, Keefe pointed to previous incidents involving Kapanen in the NHL both during his time behind the Leafs bench and before he succeeded Mike Babcock in the role.
“I think we’re a pretty forgiving place when things happen,” Keefe said. “Things happen all the time. When there’s a pattern of things that haven’t corrected themselves then you have to do something a little bit outside of what you normally would do.”
The Leafs coach wouldn’t reveal what time Kapanen was supposed to report for practice Friday, but it couldn’t have been too onerous — especially since the team was coming off a travel day home from Dallas. They were scheduled to take the ice at noon and players typically arrive at the practice rink no later than an hour before then.
