Lightning-Leafs: Anthony Cirelli, Mitch Marner competition goes beyond this series

When Daniel Ciampini returned with buddy Anthony Cirelli to the Lightning center’s Tampa home following Game 4 on Sunday, he would have been happy to grab a beer by the pool to unwind.

Maybe catch up on a Netflix show.

But Ciampini knew better. He knew Cirelli.

It was approximately midnight, and Cirelli still had some work to do. As he did after Game 3, Cirelli sunk into the comfy L-shaped couch in his living room, turned on his laptop and started to go over all of his 19 shifts from a dominating 7-3 victory over the Leafs. Cirelli’s line (with Brayden Point and Alex Killorn) was able to keep Leafs superstars Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner off the board for a second straight game. Shot attempts in the series are 22-5 in Tampa Bay’s favor when Matthews and Marner are up against Point and Cirelli.

No matchup in the series is more significant or decisive.

None has this type of familiarity, either.

Cirelli, 24, and Marner, 25, are friends who have trained most summers together in Toronto since they entered the NHL. It’s a pretty eclectic and dynamic group at Dan Noble’s Noble Sports & Performance, also including Michael Dal Colle, Taylor and Darren Raddysh, and Ciampini, who played last season in Austria. They’re like a “band of brothers,” as Ciampini put it, with Marner and Cirelli the alphas when it comes to competitiveness, battling in everything from handball to “H-O-R-S-E” to medicine ball volleyball.

“They don’t like to be outworked,” Noble said. “Sometimes that will boil over and they’ll fight with each other. It’s highly competitive to the point where, in warmups when players are doing some one-touch or two-touch games with a soccer ball, they’ll be ready to tear each other’s heads off.”

The stakes couldn’t be higher now, with Cirelli’s back-to-back Cup champion Lightning playing for their legacy, and Marner’s Leafs trying to avoid infamy — another first-round series exit. The series is tied 2-2 going into Game 5 on Tuesday in Toronto. So it wasn’t surprising to Ciampini that, after Game 4, Cirelli was going over clips, being critical of himself about his body and stick positioning on shifts and his faceoffs (2-for-7), studying where players are lined up.

Cirelli, the Selke Trophy-caliber, shutdown center, and Marner, the prolific, 100-point scorer, have differences in styles. But they’d both agree they’ve each had an impact on each other’s rise. And there’s no doubt their history provides a blueprint for this series.

“You want your summer skates to be competitive, and we push each other,” Marner said. “He’s a great guy to train with, both on and off the ice. He’s turned into one hell of a player.”

And in this series, one hell of a pain.

Marner and Cirelli grew up in the Toronto area but took different paths.

The rise for Marner was quicker, with the No. 4 pick in 2015 quickly establishing himself as a rising star (Cirelli was a third-round pick in that draft). He was a high pick in the Ontario Hockey League Draft, with his photo now on the wall of fame for the London Knights, alongside Brendan Shanahan, Corey Perry and Patrick Kane.

Cirelli? His story is one you have to experience to believe.

The wiry forward from Woodbridge was passed over in back-to-back OHL Drafts, meaning 600 players got their names called. “I wasn’t the only dumb-dumb,” Oshawa GM Roger Hunt said.

“One of the dumbest things I’ve done,” former Windsor GM Warren Rychel said.

Cirelli was initially cut by Oshawa in a walk-on tryout, told he should spend another year in Tier II. He planned to return to Woodbridge to resume high school classes, and play for a junior A team in Mississauga. But that night, Hunt agonized on his screened-in porch, calling his coach, D.J. Smith, now the Senators’ coach, “I just have a bad feeling about this. Why did I do this?”

After a few phone calls, to his scout and owner, Hunt called the Cirelli family, telling Anthony to “hand in your books and get back to Oshawa.”

All Cirelli did with his second chance was score 36 points in 68 games for the Generals, tallying the Memorial Cup winner. “He outworked everybody,” Smith said. “We had other guys that were drafted and (were) high-end prospects, but he didn’t think about it — he just outworked them. Unfortunately, some of the other guys aren’t in the NHL, and he is. It’s a testament to. if you say you want something bad enough, you can get it done.”

Cirelli grew up idolizing Jonathan Toews, appreciating his 200-foot game — “one of the better two-way players in the game.” Smith would tell him that if he wanted to make the NHL, that would be his ticket. It’s how Cirelli has grown into Tampa Bay’s “engine.” 

“Obviously everyone wants to score, to be that guy,” Cirelli said. “But I understood going through juniors and my coach told me, ‘You need role players, you need guys to do other things.’ I took that to heart and tried to be really good on the defensive side. He said, ‘If you’re not going to be good defensively, then you’re not going to play.’ I’m just trying to stick to the same game plan.

“Through junior and stuff, the only reason I made the team is because of how hard I worked. That’s been my mentality since I started playing hockey and that’s what got me here, how I’m going to stay. If I’m not working, I’m not useful at all.”

Want to know why Cirelli plays a relentless style? Look at how he got here.

“Everyone talks about his story — always keep grinding — but it takes some luck too and timing,” Ciampini said.”A lot of people forget that stars have to be aligned, and his kind of did. You can see in the way he plays. He plays like he’s got something to lose, like someone is going to take his job. Coming up, he never made the triple-A team, someone always wanted to come for his job.

“He was never the guy. He plays like that still, which is pretty cool for someone who is five years in (with) two Cups. He still wants more.”

So does Marner, which makes them competitively compatible.

Those who train with both say Marner has the more “bubbly” and outgoing personality, with Cirelli as the quiet one who has a single-minded focus. “He’s not there to make friends,” goalie Evan Wright said. “He’s there to get better, and I love that.” Wright, who didn’t play above midget Triple-A, was asked to come in and play goal for their workouts a few years ago and caught a glimpse of the chemistry between Marner and Cirelli.

It was after a scrimmage, and Marner and Cirelli spent 40 minutes straight shooting together on Wright. Cirelli was on the glove side, Marner on the hashmark on the blocker side. Wright noticed how Marner would help him make adjustments, telling him to look for low blocker. Both NHLers would ask Wright what he saw on certain shots and angles.

Cirelli and Marner would trade notes on positioning and their shots — even if they wanted to kick each other’s ass in the post-practice battles on the shooting range.

“One-hundred percent, they bring each other’s games up,” Wright said. “Everyone wants to win these scrimmages, these three-on-threes. They were all going balls out. But you could tell they respected each other.

“It was like, game recognize game.”

A lot of the things Cirelli is great at — from his stick work to his board battles to anticipation — are worked on during the summer in drills, whether it’s in two-on-two or three-on-three or specific warmups. Noble said that while some pro players could be “covert” on what they do well and what they know, Marner and Cirelli are open with each other about their knowledge. When two Selke-caliber defenders share notes, it makes for a strong combination.

“Down low defensively, (Cirelli) reminds me a lot in his little battles like (Pavel) Datsyuk,” former Lightning teammate Ryan Callahan said. “You don’t even know he’s there and he’s lifting your stick to get the puck. He’s so good in those close battles. He’s one of those players I appreciate watching and doesn’t get the credit for all the little things he does.”

Hall of Famer Martin St. Louis, now the Canadiens’ coach, said there’s not one thing that Cirelli does that “wows” anyone, but he does everything well. “You can see the way (Patrice Bergeron) plays a little bit,” St. Louis said. “And Cirelli skates better than him. Just in terms of purpose on the ice, the role he plays on his team, he’s got some Bergeron in him.”

Bergeron, the Bruins’ captain, will likely win his fifth Selke Trophy, given to the league’s top defensive forward. Cirelli has finished as high as fourth, but should be in the mix in coming years. Cirelli ranks first in the league in quality of competition of forwards faced (96th percentile), as indicated in this chart from Shayna Goldman’s story on Selke contenders.

Sidney Crosby said Cirelli is fast but can also play physically. Skating provides an edge for Cirelli, who can cut off time and space for stars like Marner and Matthews. “Some guys are physical,” Crosby said, “but they don’t necessarily get there all the time. With speed like he has, he’ll put himself in good position.”

Leafs captain John Tavares said what stands out to him about Cirelli is how cerebral he is, “He can put himself in the offensive players’ shoes and read the play,” Tavares said, “think along with what they’re trying to do, the next play you’re trying to make and anticipate those things.” Part of that comes with feel and experience for Cirelli, and the other is that very few players on the Lightning watch as much video or want as much feedback as him, assistant coach Derek Lalonde said.

Coach Jon Cooper compared Cirelli’s defensive anticipation and IQ to what Nikita Kucherov displays offensively.

“He doesn’t cheat, he doesn’t quit and he always comes up with pucks,” Cooper said. “There’s Bergeron and guys like (Anze) Kopitar, those elite guys, but if you ask anybody, playing against Cirelli is not fun. He just has an innate ability to know — like Kuch knows where the play is going to be ahead of time — and Cirelli has a weird way of knowing where guys are going, where pucks are going to be. He’s a hound. It’s a trait that not a lot of guys have, they don’t practice it or feel it’s a necessity because they put the puck in the net.

“But Cirelli is the other way around. He takes a lot of pride in going and getting the puck back. And that’s important.”

Ciampini sat in section 130 at Amalie Arena for Games 3 and 4, among the other friends, families, wives and kids.

There were certainly some flashbacks of Marner and Cirelli battling in workouts, but he was looking more for their interactions at the whistles.

“It’s funny. They just stare at each other,” Ciampini said.”They don’t even smirk. It’s kind of comical.”

Ciampini has gotten to see both of his friends during the series. He dropped Marner a note when he was headed over to the Ford Performance Centre for practice in Toronto, telling him he was going to see Cirelli.

“What side are you on right now?” Marner chirped.

The same thing happened when Ciampini caught up with Marner at Amalie Arena after the game and told him he was staying with Cirelli.

“I told him I’m going wherever there’s free lunch,” Ciampini said.

The group chat for the workout group in the summer is likely going to heat up as the series goes on. There’s always ribbing in there, from who’s going to show up how many minutes late to who won the drills that day. Ciampini recalled poking fun at Cirelli for wearing jeans on a jetski after playing a server in Alex Killorn’s “Dock Talk” Instagram series video. Ciampini laughed when Cirelli, who makes $4.9 million a year, worried how much furniture for his new house would cost — “I joked he doesn’t have to go to IKEA any more,” Ciampini said.

Ciampini, Wright and Dal Colle get to see Marner’s generosity, as he often invites the guys to his Ontario cottage in the summer. They notice Cirelli’s softer side. too, as Lightning teammates can attest. Defenseman Zach Bogosian noted Cirelli is “fiesty” on the ice, but just a “polite Italian” kid off it, offering to dress up as the Easter Bunny for the kids at their team party (when it was 90 degrees out). Bogosian said Cirelli got his three kids Christmas gifts (a walkie-talkie and dinosaur toys).

“They’re just two normal people,” Ciampini said, “that are both very competitive and bring the best out of each other. There’s a general respect, an admiration for each other.”

When Ciampini got settled in his seats for Game 3 in Tampa, he took a photo of the opening faceoff, with Marner and Cirelli right by each other. He put it on his Instagram story, with a note. “I hope everyone has fun.”

“I’m just looking forward to the series being over,” Ciampini said, laughing. “But seeing them go at it? It’s crazy.”

(Photo of Anthony Cirelli, Mitch Marner and Daniel Ciampini courtesy of Ciampini)