Hawks fans know, or at least the ones that have been around awhile, that when your team doesn’t have much it’s easy to focus on what it isn’t and what it doesn’t have than what it does. Leafs fans have only been doing that for over a decade now, since the last time they mattered in any sense (even though they’ve always thought they mattered). That does to the players on the team, where the focus is on what they aren’t than what they might actually be, as a fanbase pines for better days.

It feels like that’s what happened to Nazem Kadri. Back when the Leafs had nothing, he basically played with nothing. Tyler Bozak got to play with the one, top-line winger they had because they lived together and Bozak went on Kessel’s hot dog runs or something. Kadri was always just too small or didn’t quite score enough or didn’t justify the hype or was just a bit too much of an asshole on the ice.

Funny how when you actually ice a representative team a player can come alive. While Matthews and Marner and Nylander have stolen all the headlines, Kadri is having a near-incredible season under the radar.