Stunning decline of Morgan Rielly near-impossible to explain

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Normally, defenceman get better with age.

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They calm down over time. They skate less and think more. They understand their positioning, where to be on the ice, where not to be.

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They learn what to do with their sticks and how best to control gaps. They understand angles better. They learn how to shrink the ice in the areas that matter most.

We’ve seen it over time with Chris Chelios and Zdeno Chara playing into their 40s. We watched Chris Pronger play Hall of Fame-level defence by barely skating anywhere in his final years. The best learn where to put pucks, how to speed up and slow the game down.

It is so much about thinking, playing defence at the highest level in the National Hockey League.

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Which makes Morgan Rielly almost impossible to explain. He turns 32 next week, is playing in his 13th season, and this should be the hockey time of his life.

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He’s a bright man, well-spoken, a husband, a young father, married to a competitive athlete, full of intellect and personality — imagine that, a Leaf with personality? — and all around him this season is failure.

The Maple Leafs are a mess. Rielly’s season has been a mess. He leads the NHL in a statistic no one wants to leads the NHL in — most goals against at 5-on-5.

Like his team, he isn’t getting better, the past few years have been something of a steady decline at a time when the opposite normally would be happening.

If it hasn’t already, time is running out for Rielly as a Leaf and he’ll probably need to agree this summer — if he hasn’t yet — that it’s time to move on. It’s his call with a no-trade clause in his contract.

What happened to Rielly?

The hard part with Rielly is comprehending how all this talent, his offensive skill, his skating ability, hasn’t translated to growing hockey genius. He has that kind of talent, just below the top tier of NHL defencemen.

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He is not Cale Makar or Quinn Hughes or Matthew Schaefer and he will never be that. But he could or should be like Thomas Harley or Josh Morrissey or Roman Josi — he probably should be — but he’s nowhere near them anymore either.

He’s almost by himself at this point, a struggling artist in need of a hit song.

The great Scotty Bowman loves nothing more than to talk about hockey on any day and at any time. He’s a walking, talking encyclopedia of the game. And when he talks about what he likes and doesn’t like about defenceman, you can hear him talking about Rielly, even if he isn’t mentioning any player at all.

Bowman hates what he calls chasers: “You can’t win with them,” he’ll tell you.

Chasers are defenceman who chase the play. They overreact to the game. They put themselves out of position too often.

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Rielly is a chaser. In his own end, he is too often out of position, too often on the wrong side of the offensive player, his stick in the wrong place, his strong body not helping in any way physically.

Rielly has been on the ice for 65 goals against at 5-on-5 in this rather dreadful Leafs season. That’s the most in the NHL.

By comparison, Drew Doughty has been scored on 30 times in Los Angeles and looks close to retirement. The same number the emerging star, Darren Raddysh, has been scored on in Tampa Bay.

That’s less than half of Rielly’s number.

The ancient Brett Burns has been scored on 31 times in Colorado, the same number as the superb Makar.

The incredible teenager Schaeffer has been scored on 36 times with the Islanders.

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Rielly’s own teammate, Jake McCabe, has been scored on 45 times at even strength.

Another oldie but goodie, Kris Letang, has been on the ice for 39 goals against in Pittsburgh and other prominent defencemen, Moritz Seider in Detroit and Jake Anderson in Ottawa, have been on for 39 goals.

Frozen by failure?

It’s probably 25 too many for Rielly and, when you watch the replays after too many Leafs goals, you can back them up, watch them again and see his number 44 too often in the wrong place, on the wrong side of the scorer, seemingly there, but not there, like a defensive back getting beat deep when he has good coverage on the receiver.

The reaction doesn’t seem to happen quick enough. Maybe he’s been frozen by failure. The thought process, for such a bright guy, seems to slow on the ice.

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The other day on the NHL Network, three-time Stanley Cup winner Ken Daneyko was talking about his career as an NHL defenceman and how much he learned by being coached by Larry Robinson.

He said he got 10 more NHL seasons in the league because of all the subtleties he learned from Robinson. Stick positioning. Stick angling. Gap control. Where to be on the ice. How not to get scored on.

Lessons from one of the greatest to ever play.

Listening to Daneyko, who was a completely different defenceman than Rielly is, sounded familiar. Rielly needs this kind of tutorial just about now. Maybe he can’t get it from this Leafs coaching staff — which probably is a coaching staff on the way out.

Maybe this is who he is and what he will be for the rest of his career.

I still believe he can salvage what’s left of his career or reputation. He has four more years on his contract at a reasonable price of $7.5 million a year.

He needs a career renovation now. He needs a career makeover.

That may have to start somewhere else.

ssimmons@postmedia.com

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