Rigamarole - A Foot In The Crease - Episode 5.30

www.afootinthecrease.com

See now I’m confused. Never, not once, during the entire regular season did I see Christian Hanson do anything that left me impressed. I never thought, “oh, good play” or “hey, this guy could turn into a player down the road” when watching him. In fact, I had actually grown comfortable with the idea that perhaps Hanson just wasn’t quite going to pan out the way the Maple Leafs had expected and you know what, that was alright. Sometimes you gamble and win, Tyler Bozak, other times you gamble and lose and even if the Leafs were going to lose on Hanson, it’s not like they were going to lose that much.

Hanson never showed any speed, any aggression, any desire to go to the net with authority, any desire to play a physical style of game that one would think his 6’3”, 203 lbs frame would allow him to. Until, that is, on Saturday night in Montreal in the Leafs final regular season game. There Hanson looked like the player everybody was told he could be when the Leafs signed him out of the University of Notre Dame just over a year ago. He was throwing his body around, he went to the net, he showed a bit of a scoring touch, in short, he just looked interested.

The frustrating part of that is why now? Why did that style of play take him until his thirty first game of the season in the last regular season contest? Was he just cruising through the rest of the season? Where was that kind of play when it still mattered because hey, if he’d played like that the whole season, there’s a good chance that he could turn himself into a downright effective player.

That he has finally shown some potential is encouraging but perhaps it’s the mental aspect of his game that is lacking. Brian Burke ought to sit him down and warn him that unless he enjoys long bus rides in the AHL, the style of play he showed against Montreal is what he will need to show more often than not next season. But hey, all that was just rigamarole.