Maple Leafs’ Jason Spezza will not go down without a fight, literally - Sportsnet.ca
TORONTO – To understand what it means to the Toronto Maple Leafs that Jason Spezza picked a fight, chucked his gloves and started throwing rights at Dean Kukan’s face with the season looking lost Friday night, you should know a few things.
You should know that Spezza, 37, grew up a Leafs fan in this city and that he agreed to skate minimal minutes here for the lowest amount of money the club could legally agree to pay him.
You should know that already this week he’s watched some of his ring-chasing contemporaries, like Henrik Lundqvist and Patrick Marleau, get kicked out of the Eastern Conference bubble with, quite literally, no fanfare.
And you should know that he has four daughters aged 10 and under: Sophia, Nicola, Anna and Julia. Sometimes he reads them children’s books authored by Zach Hyman.
When Spezza kissed his girls goodbye and moved into a hotel so close yet so impenetrably far away in order to play “road” games like Game 4’s 4-3 stunner over Columbus, they understood why their father would be FaceTime-only for two months, best-case scenario.
“They know Daddy’s got a dream,” Spezza said. “Trying to win a Stanley Cup as a Maple Leaf is something I dreamed of as a kid.”
This isn’t sacrifice. This is choice. This is opportunity, perhaps one last.
So, it wasn’t that Spezza got caught up in the emotions of Elimination Night that he fought for just the seventh time in an NHL career that spans 1,207 games. It was that — after watching the Maple Leafs give up six unanswered goals in the series — he was trying to inject some emotions.
No way the young guys who affectionately nicknamed him “Vintage” and picked his brain for face-off tips could possibly feel as desperate as the old fourth-liner with no job security for 2020-21. But he could help them come close.
“Just trying to spark the guys,” Spezza explained of the five-minute major, which drew a chorus of stick slaps from the bench. “Just trying to show some desperation and have some pushback. Without the crowd, you don’t have that. Just trying to create some emotion and play the role that I’m in. Trying to get everyone going.”
