Morgan Rielly

Leafs' Morgan Rielly embraces team's newfound 'boring' status

Published Oct. 21, 2015 3:48 p.m. ET

foxsports

Last season was a tumultuous one for the Leafs to say the least. The team fired its coach midway through the season, lost nearly every game in the second half of the year, saw players get combative when inappropriate tweets aired on television during the trade deadline and had a player benched for bad behavior off the ice to name just a few of the things that went wrong.

When the Leafs brought in a new coach this season in Mike Babcock, there was hope that he would be able to provide some more stability. That wish has been realized, and the team is even relatively boring as it lives in the shadow of the Blue Jays' playoff campaign.

Count young defenseman Morgan Rielly as one of the fans of this new status.

"It’s great," Rielly told the Toronto Star. "Last year we had our moments where we weren’t proud of certain things. This is a big thing for us. We want to make people proud of us. We want to be proud of ourselves. We want to behave the right way. Play hard. We want not to have any controversy, just to be boring."

It's not as if Toronto is seeing the results of a more stable season in the standings. The Leafs are 1-3-1 through the first five games of the season, good for second-to-last in the Atlantic Division. But there seems to be a quiet confidence in Toronto that the team will eventually flourish under Babcock, new GM Lou Lamoriello, and president Brendan Shanahan.

Until then, it looks like all is boring (in a good way) on the Toronto.

(h/t Toronto Star)

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Morgan Rielly

Toronto Maple Leafs

National Hockey League