What does Travis Dermott have to do to stick at the NHL level?

When the Leafs called up Travis Dermott last week, Mike Babcock told reporters that the young defenseman would see success if he wasn’t noticed.

I get that. Defense isn’t sexy; if you have a sound defensive game and don’t make too many mistakes, odds are you won’t be making highlight reels. And that isn’t a bad thing. One of my favourite things about Carl Gunnarsson was that you rarely noticed him, but in a good way.

There are many types of defencemen. Some are best when they aren’t noticeable and others are best when they take over a game. Let’s look at a guy like Erik Karlsson. Karlsson is somebody that puts the fear of God into the opposing team’s fans whenever he climbs over the boards. If you don’t notice Erik Karlsson after he logs 25 minutes in a game, that’s nothing short of a colossal victory for the opposing line tasked with shutting him down.

In contrast, you could compare that to a “safe*” defenseman like Roman Polak, where “hey, didn’t even realize he played today!” seems like a fantasy. I know this because I remember every single Polak shift, and they cause me to wake up screaming in the middle of the night.

There are many reasons why I don’t think Roman Polak is a “safe*” player, or even a decent NHL defenseman, and the fact that I see his name on my timeline after he does at least one stupid thing a shift is the main reason why.

But this isn’t about Roman Polak for two reasons: the first is that science hasn’t evolved enough for us to clone a game-ready version of Ron Hainsey to help out the other Ron Hainsey on the penalty kill yet, so we’re kind of stuck with Polak until we can do something about that. The second reason is, well, we’ve beat this dead horse so much that I don’t even think there’s anything left to beat.

Babcock said he didn’t want Dermott to be noticed. After two games, he’s pretty much the only thing everybody wants to talk about.

This isn’t me predicting the future and saying that Dermott is destined for greatness, but his first two games have been really impressive.

One thing that frustrated me with Morgan Rielly in his early days was the fact that he looked too passive at times. We know what 44 can do with the puck, it just took him a long time to start working his magic. A lot of this probably has to do with the fact that he became an NHL regular at the age of 19. I’d argue that the magic didn’t happen until the latter part of last season and continued into this year.

The thing about Dermott early on is that he plays like he’s afraid of spending the rest of his life with the Toronto Marlies. Even though he had a few passes that he messed up, he’s either playing with confidence, or Lou promised him that he’ll be sent to wherever the hell he sent Stephane Robidas.

Here he is taking the body and putting Markus Granlund on his ass on Saturday.

He’s also shown poise in these first few games. First, he breaks up this odd man rush and creates a two on one in the early stages of the game Monday night.

Later in the period, he collects the puck from the slot and opts to circle around and attempt to get a cycle going with Mitch Marner rather than blindly throw the puck into a mess of legs, something many young defensemen would try to do.

Here he chases Matt Calvert into the boards and creates a mess along the wall.

Then collects the puck and starts a breakout.

In addition to all that, he also led all Leafs defensemen in 5v5 CF% on both nights.

It’s way too early to get the hype train going, but Travis Dermott has turned some heads and showed some promise in his first few games. Instead of playing a “safe*” role, it looks like he’s actually trying to create chances and make the most of his opportunity with the big club. And he’s being rewarded, getting time on the second pairing with Jake Gardiner.

Now I would tell everybody to temper their expectations, but thankfully this isn’t a fanbase that gets excited too easily. We must remember that Dermott is still 21 and still has a lot of learn-

screw it, Travis Dermott is actually good.