Road Eats with Simon Benoit and the buds, 5 Cities in 11 days | The Leaf: Blueprint S11 E5

The first lengthy road trip of the season. The bags are packed, getting set for five games and 11 days away from home. A chance for the team to bond and make a move up the standings. We got cameras on, Steve. Heat. Heat. All right, boys. Come on. We’re going to Martini in Columbus. I’ve been to this place before. Nice little Italian spot. Nothing too crazy tonight. Just looking to get a nice chicken parm in us. Usually the guys pretty much get all the same stuff. Just chicken parm, Caesar salad, a couple apps. It’s just easy easy orders for the servers. I like eating good food. I like knowing that the food I’m eating is just it’s good. And I don’t like to go somewhere and this is all fried stuff. So I I always try to look for like I call it like farm to table kind of food, momless food, just like some like comforting food, you know? That’s what I like. So, when I research for my restaurants, I like to follow those like criterias, right? That’s fine. I just got brand new shoes, but it’s we’ll walk it to dinner. It’s okay. You’re walking on clouds. They’re waterproof. Walking on clouds, bud. Me, too. As Betty steps in a puddle. Yeah. My feet are all wet now. It’s like we’re filming a music video with the umbrella. We’re always together. Like, we spend pretty much more time together than with our family back home, right? So, like sometimes just getting away, just being saw, going to eat, we get to talk, just share experiences and just being around the guys. What are you saying back there? You You said ice cream goes in the fridge. Yeah, ice cream goes in the fridge. No. Na put the rest of the ice cream in my fridge, not in my freezer. It was frozen. So, I wanted to by the time we take it out when we finish dinner, it’s it’s perfect. We usually go with kind of the same group of guys, so we start to know like what they like. I mean, I’ve had some mistakes. I went to places that I didn’t really didn’t like, but I kind of learned what they like. So, I tried to find a little balance. I mean, a steakhouse, always a steakhouse, it’s easy. But when when you like kind of explore, it gets tricky. Oh, we’ve been here before. Yeah. You got a place that was jammed over here. I think we’re So, there’s Stevie coming. No, Steviey’s eating here with Cber and other guys like all the guys are eating here tonight. It’s actually nice going uh to dinner with some guys that are big foodies, you know, who eat man. Is that me like crazy? We go eat with like depending on the the where we are, we I I can go eat with completely different group sometimes, but I I I like the type of food that they like. So that’s why we’re usually more like with Bobby, Daisy, and Walter. You know what we’re getting, guys? But I uh Carpacio, I know you want your Carpacio. I knew that’s a staple. We got to We got to go back to your app. I start writing these down. I did. I I’ve been doing it so far. That’s good. I got to get your username and passcode so I can get in there myself. What is this? It’s It’s an ad that I Was that funny, Bobby? Can I get your banking info as well? Well, no. We’re going to log in your password. We’ll log into the app together. So when he goes places, he could like put it in and then when I go places. So instead of making I’ll take the login as well. Instead of taking two different accounts, we just have like one account that we all put our own stuff in. Okay. I’m in. And you can like pinpoint the restaurant. It like shows on the map. Let’s say you’re somewhere and just pinpoint where you’ve been like to my list. That’s all like first pick. It’s like the violin and then this is all the rest. How many have you done so far? What? Only starting this year. So I’ve been five on five. So you give them ratings and that’s how you rank them or what? Yeah. I rank them based on like like they say like Leon it’s my favorite one so far like it’s in Montreal of course and I go based on that. Okay. So big news for the Leafs. You get Austin Matthews back. Matthew Ny Nicholas Wah. Yeah it’s exciting. I mean I think this is a great opportunity for us here on the road of six games or so to come together as a group and and find our game, find our rhythm starting tonight. The Leafs and the Columbus Blue Jackets. the Leafs getting healthy and looking to get some momentum coming as well. It’s a boost, right? It’s a boost for our team, for morale, getting our captain back for sure. And the other two guys are good players, important players. So, yeah, it’s great. They’re all back tonight. Tavaris working the boards on the left wing side into the corner. Round back at the net goes Tavarus. He stops up. Can’t make a play. Too long covered. Shelly pass. Scores. A short pass from Knander. Tie the game. The Cowboy. Great team win. Wy. Great game. Confidence. All it is is confidence. All right. That’s a big win for us. I should have still constant. It’s a great win, boys. Way to uh come back at the end there. Good sh. Keep going. Hey, coach is going to challenge his knee forward here. We’re going to get this guy here. I want this weak side forward. We got to do a better job of going between the two. You wake up, you go eat in the morning, you wait in the bus, take the bus, go practice, get at your meetings. After that, you come back at the hotel and you have just enough time to go eat. And once that you need to go rest after because you know you have the game and we play and then after the game on wash, we had the back to back. So you play wash, you take the flight, you go pizzer, and then you just try to go to bed as soon as possible because you need your energy back. Get up the next morning cuz it’s a back toback. We don’t practice. We don’t have a meeting. Once the meeting is done, you go eat, you rest, you nap, and then you prepare for yourself for the game. You don’t do much, but you do a lot at the same time. It’s a hockey night in Pittsburgh as the crowd gets loud with Sydney Crosby being introduced in the starting lineup. He’s in the starting lineup. So too is Austin Matthews. Back-to- back games. The Leafs get the first break. In back-to back games, it’s a defenseman that finds the back of the net. Down in on goal. Doi steals. Centered in front. They score. Here’s Doi across the line dropping back for Matthews. Rich shot scores. Austin Matthews snapping one off the top of the circle. You know, it’s confidence. You know, it’s they’re going to feel good about themselves and that’s good. And we just got to build off it. And we got to keep getting better though. We can’t, you know, there’s things that we can do better and we got to keep working on it. It’s it’s all part of it. And that will do it. The Maple Leafs are going to bury the Penguins by a score of seven to two. Hell of a game. Really good job by everybody. Beast. Hell of a game. Uh, play it, boys. Great job. Let’s keep blowing here. How you feeling? Excellent. We’re motivated. We want to come out and, you know, obviously play, keep keep it going here. We we got a winning pit. So, I think that’s our focus, right? Is just try to get that win tomorrow. It’s going to be a big big one for us tomorrow. And obviously, we got to make sure that we’re ready because uh every every game is so important right now. And and at the same time, we want to build from what we did good night and some wins to get here. I might have booked at the wrong spot, but it’s fine. No, we’re at the lobby. I know, but I thought I was calling at mass. Anyway, we’ll see. I have no idea. I think I booked at the wrong restaurant or No. Yeah, I went there. Okay. Bye. It’s upstairs. Where? It’s like I I thought I I thought I booked that place, but there’s another restaurant upstairs and I apparently I booked the other place, but it looks pretty good. So, we’ll find Can we not go to that one? Well, I book there. Let’s go see. You have to book. I have to book. I did go check there and there was no reservation. I was panic a little bit. Hey, we just lied to you. The old Houdini. Yeah. We’ll be there. See you there. This is great. Come on in, bud. Where is he? You’re welcome. How are you doing today? He’s in the bush right there. Great. Thank you. That’s nice. Ready to win? Yes. That’s how it is. This is incredibly spicy. Okay. Incredibly spicy. Oh boy. All right. Thank you. It’s a nice color. It smells spicy. Ry give you the biggest bottle of it. It’s the hottest. Yeah, like a hot doll. Oh, it’s got a little zip to it. I barely wow. It stings a notch. It stings. Water’s going to make it worse. Think so far? Yes. Great. Thank you. was going to point where every everything was pick after a resounding victory in Pittsburgh. The Toronto Maple Leafs have traveled south to Florida to tangle with the twotime Stanley Cup defending champion Florida Panthers. It’s going to be intense, right? We’re both tight in the the standing here. Every point matters, so I’m sure they’re going to come hard, but we will as well. We know how they play and we know what type of game it’s going to be. That their game’s not going to change and and we just got to build off last game. We did a lot of good things with the puck and we’re going to have to do that again tonight and there’s certain things that we can do tonight that uh will give us success and that’s what we’re going to focus on. McMahon goes into the corner near side back to the point. Stetcher with a wrist shot. Scores. Deflection in front of the goal maybe. But Troy Stcher may have his first goal as a Maple Leaf. The Leafs get it back in front and they score. Add Dakota Joshua to the list again. The Leafs have had two shots. It’s two nothing. It bounces in front. They score. Scotty Lton. There’s a bit of history here. So, I think it’s just something that we we can build off of and take that energy and ride that momentum. In games like this, you kind of get everybody contributing up and down the lineup. You should have this mindset every night how hard we played tonight. The puck battles, the aggressiveness, the numbers on the puck, the physicality we played with, the directness. That’s good hockey. We’re a good team. Play that way. We could beat anybody. We’ll see effort tonight, boys. Good right slinger. Keep them coming, baby. Keep them coming. Momentum is a big thing, I think, from game to game and and to get that confidence and and just continue that belief because we have it in the room. So, we continue believing in one another. We’re going to have more nights like this. Alex, can I get new gloves, please, for tomorrow or right now? growing up. Obviously, I wanted to be a hockey player, but like I think it took me a long time before realizing that I might have an actual chance because I like I didn’t get drafted in NHL and stuff. So, I think it was probably after my first year pro that I was like, if I continue pushing here, I might actually like make it. But yeah, I think it took took a bit. through and the Leafs have once again scored on the first shot to take the lead 53 seconds in. In the race car’s lost his stick, he holds down nice who’s in goal and scores. Holy macks on the rush. Doni in front of the net. They score. Matthews set up by Max perfectly. The Leafs will win their third in a row and four in their last five. Keep it going, boys. Beasty. Playing in a national, it’s not like you do it like a class at school and once you finish a class, you can just be what you want. There’s a lot of moving parts to reach that goal. I had an opportunity and I just seized it. Yeah, with with the type of player that I was, you pretty much only have one opportunity. So that you just have to take it and do well with it once it just comes in front of you. So it’s really hard to get here, but once you get here, it harder is just to stay. It’s an everyday battle.

Blueprint goes behind the scenes with the Toronto Maple Leafs on their intensive 11-day, 5-city road trip. From Columbus to Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, Florida, and Carolina, this episode reveals the unfiltered road grind and what it takes to perform away from home. We also sit down with defenseman Simon Benoit to discuss team camaraderie, unveil their go-to road trip cuisine, and get to know the man behind the blue line.

00:57 – Dining out in Columbus
04:42 – TOR vs CBJ
06:05 – The road trip grind
07:02 – TOR vs PIT
08:12 – Practice in Florida
08:59 – Dining out in Florida
11:11 – TOR vs FLA
13:04 – Simon Benoit undrafted
13:50 – TOR vs CAR

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