Damien Cox: The fight for jobs is just starting for the division-leading Maple Leafs

Normally, a top team would have most of this worked out in training camp.

You’d have your depth chart and your roles, much of that decided by contractual situations. The guy with the two-way contract always has to overperform to steal a job.

This, however, hasn’t been like most NHL seasons. It’s been unlike any other, really, and that includes the way in which some teams have gradually found their games as the season has progressed. In recent weeks, you’ve seen teams like Ottawa, Detroit and Buffalo play much better hockey than earlier in the season. There was no training camp for any team, you’ll recall, and that seems to have been particularly costly to teams with a lot of young, inexperienced players and unsettled rosters trying to find their way.

In a different way, more established teams have also used the season to experiment. Take Toronto. You might think as the best team in the North Division the Maple Leafs would have a settled roster by this point in the season. Some parts of it are. You know Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner are going to play together, as are John Tavares and William Nylander. For much of the season, Justin Holl and Jake Muzzin have been a defensive tandem.

Otherwise, the picture has been much more muddled. Surprisingly so. We all know about the ongoing soap opera in net. Incumbent starter Freddie Andersen has been on the injured list since March 19. Jack Campbell was hot, then not so much. David Rittich arrived at the trade deadline, and Big Save Dave has not yet been seen. Michael Hutchinson has actually been the most consistent goalie the Leafs have. Veini Vehilainen has dressed, but not yet faced a shot.

One of those masked men will need to emerge as the starter before the playoffs start. Right now, it looks like Campbell, but it’s unclear.

As much attention as the club’s netminding story has attracted, meanwhile, the competition for roster positions and ice time has been growing increasingly fierce in the past few weeks.

Some of that is because the team has had a couple of difficult periods of late, leaving head coach Sheldon Keefe looking for new answers and players sniffing out opportunities. Some of it is because new bodies — Alex Galchenyuk, Nick Foligno, Riley Nash, Stefan Noesen, Ben Hutton — have arrived by trade over the course of the season.

Now there are too many bodies when everyone’s healthy. That’s good. Most coaches will tell you competition within the roster can be a very helpful thing.

So with Zach Hyman and Ilya Mikheyev out with injuries on Thursday in Winnipeg, and Foligno having arrived for his first game, there were some different looks to the lineup. Foligno played with Matthews and Marner, and delivered a solid north-south effort. Keefe liked it enough that he had Foligno on the ice in the final minute protecting a 4-3 lead.

That left wing spot beside Matthews and Marner once belonged to Joe Thornton. Then Hyman. Then Galchenyuk. Now, for at least for the time being, it’s Foligno’s to lose. That bumps everybody else down. Thornton and Jason Spezza have been enjoyable stories all season, but neither got 12 minutes of playing time against the Jets. Alex Kerfoot didn’t kill penalties as much. Adam Brooks only played 8:55, but he did enough in those minutes to catch the eye of a few people. Nick Robertson played five games in nine days then sat out.

When Mikheyev comes back, somebody is coming out. Same for Hyman. Robertson will draw back in soon, and Keefe will want a look at Noesen. Nash should be ready for the playoffs. And nobody is going to want to be the player taken out to make room for one of his teammates.

On the back end, Rasmus Sandin got his first chance in place of Travis Dermott. Then Zach Bogosian got hurt and Dermott was back, playing the right side. Hutton, meanwhile, sat and watched and doesn’t know when he’ll get his chance. Bogosian will miss at least four weeks, Keefe said Friday.

Throw in five straight losses which the Leafs had experienced before beating the Jets on Thursday, and you have two dozen players or more either looking to stay in the lineup or trying to grab a spot while the coach is searching for a winning lineup. That creates an edgy dynamic.

Maybe that explains the reason the normally placid Leafs have been a little more irritable of late. Hyman got fined for slashing Winnipeg’s Neal Pionk over the head. Galchenyuk knocked Adam Lowry out of the game on Thursday with some kind of “accidental” blow to the head, and Joe Thornton was fined by the league for interfering with Mathieu Perreault.

Jets coach Paul Maurice was asked by one accommodating local media member if he felt the Leafs were a “dirty” team.

“Uh, I don’t think so,” Maurice said. “The league has said they’re not, so we will abide by the league’s rulings. “

Wayne Simmonds exchanged a few pleasantries with some of Winnipeg’s more aggressive opposing players Thursday.

“Every time we’ve played them, they’ve tried to run us out of the building to start games,” growled Simmonds. “We come and back and we’re physical and now we’re a dirty team? I don’t buy that.”

For most of the year, the Leafs have been the most gentlemanly team in the North, much to the annoyance of some of their rowdier fans. Lately, that hasn’t been quite as true. It could be the competition heating up in the division.

Or it could be the competition heating up within the team.

Damien Cox is a former Star sports reporter who is a current freelance contributing columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @DamoSpin