The Assistants and the Powerplay
The one thing that can easily sink a team is coaching. How good of a roster you have will factor into how deep you sink, because having enough skilled players can still allow you to win some games, but at the end of the day you simply won’t win a lot of important games without good coaching.
This is why we see teams like the Anaheim Ducks have breakout seasons, such as their current one. The Ducks walked to the draft board with another top 10 selection last season, their 7th straight year in which they did so, after missing the playoffs by 16pts. While 16pts doesn’t sound like much, it’s more than what separated the final wild card spot from last place in the Eastern Conference last season… it’s a gulf to say the least. Fast forward to this year and the Ducks are 1st in the Pacific Division and are one of the more exciting young teams in the NHL. Yes, the fact that some of their young stars have continued to develop, such as Leo Carlsson, Cutter Gauthier and puck-stopper, Lukas Dostal has something to do with it. The hiring of Joel Quenneville and their breakout season is no minor coincidence though.
I believe that this is why we’re watching a Leafs team that should be better than they are struggle. Whatever message Craig Berube was sending during his inaugural season was clear, but it appears that message is getting stale. I wonder if that message is being lost on his players or his assistants? Better yet, I wonder if his assistants message is being lost on the players? Marc Savard runs the powerplay and he, specifically, appears to have no real handle on what he’s doing at the moment and it’s been that way since he was hired in Toronto. Yes, the team lost Mitch Marner this summer and yes, he was the PP/QB and yes, they had the 9th best PP in the NHL last season but there were long stretches where things just didn’t look coherent and definitely weren’t effective last season as well.
This season has been a predictable one if you were paying attention. As of this writing the team has the 30th placed powerplay in the league. They sit dead last, at 32nd, in actual powerplay goals scored, with just 10 in 28 games played. This puts them on pace to score 29 goals with the man advantage over the entire season, which would be less than the 31 they accomplished during the 56 game NHL season that was shortened due to a global pandemic. Since that shortened season they have at least 54 powerplay goals every year and that mark was set under Marc Savard last season. They’re tied for 6th in short handed goals against, with 3, which means that after 28 games they have a +7 goal differential when they’re up a man, which is also the worst the NHL has to offer.
Before their loss to Montreal they won three games in a row and outscored their opponents 16-4 along the way. It has been their only stretch of hockey in which they looked like the team we were expecting to see. They were in control for the most part and playing a solid two-way game throughout those contests. However, during those games they scored just a single powerplay goal on 8 opportunities and if you watch that Nicholas Roy tally you’ll see a series of broken plays that eventually end up in the net of the Pittsburgh Penguins. What you won’t see is a powerplay that is set up, in full control of the puck and finishing the way the coach drew it up at practice. In short, the powerplay wasn’t a deciding factor during a time when the team looked their best.
None of this is helped by the fact that they are 27th in powerplay opportunities per game, which means they’ve been terrible at drawing penalties. Practice makes perfect and they simply don’t get enough real time practice, but like every other team they get plenty of time to run the gauntlet on non-game days and are still coming up short. This can’t be as simple as “they lost Marner.” This can’t be as simple as “their players aren’t shooting enough” or any of the other excuses they used last season. There is a fundamental flaw in the system and it needs to be addressed. If Marc Savard isn’t capable of changing the game plan and turning away from something that is clearly not working, then Craig Berube needs to step in to change it himself or replace Savard altogether.
The Goalies
The goalie carousel keeps spinning, but it would be nice to get some stability there.
The tandem of Anthony Stolarz and Joseph Woll was fantastic last year. It went well in terms of injuries as well. Any time that one guy was hurt the other was there to carry the load, for the most part. The end result was the Leafs using 4 goalies total throughout the year, with Matt Murray playing 2 games and Dennis Hildeby playing 6. They combined to go 4-4 in those games, which is probably all you can ask of your 3rd and 4th string goaltenders. The team has already dressed 4 goalies this year, with the intended tandem being joined by Dennis Hildeby once again and Cayden Primeau, who is now part of the Carolina Hurricanes organization. I do wonder if they’ll dress even more.
The issue now is that Joseph Woll is on IR and is expected to miss the next week, while Anthony Stolarz is nowhere to be seen and isn’t expected back anytime soon. This has opened the door for Hildeby to shoulder the load for at least a few days, which is an opportunity that I’m sure he’s excited to take advantage of, but is also a situation where the fans are understandably concerned. Last night’s 2-1 shootout loss was definitely encouraging. Hildeby stopped 33 of the 34 shots that Montreal sent his way, for a 0.971SV% and some of those stops were incredible. He looked calm and composed in the net and played a confident game all night long. While he did look like a rookie in the shootout, we’ll let that slide due to the fact that the skills competition doesn’t exist in the playoffs, where the games actually matter. The question now isn’t if he can have a good game or not, he has had a couple in a row in fact. Instead we have to ask if he can do it consistently over a number of games and what’s more, can he handle the required workload if Woll doesn’t make it back as soon as Craig Berube has predicted, without getting injured as well. We all know by now that the organization is more than a little liberal with their estimates for returning players and often understate the seriousness of their injuries. If Woll is out for 2 weeks or more will the coaching staff be forced to turn to fellow rookie, Artur Akhtyamov, to help keep Hildeby healthy, if nothing else? It’s worth pointing out at this time that, if the unthinkable happened and Hildeby went down to injury as well, the only other goalie the Leafs have in the system is Vyacheslav Peksa, who has been less than stellar throughout his professional career to date. A tandem of Akhtyamov and Peksa for just a couple of weeks could spell disaster and considering the hole that has been dug so far in the season, they can’t afford to have a couple of bad weeks again.
The teams next back-to-back set is scheduled for December 20th and 21st, so they have time to think things through before being asked to toss Hildeby into two games in two days, but they also have five games on tap between now and then. The end result of the Leafs season could very well rest on the shoulders of the 6’7″ Hildeby right now.
The 3rd Line and Bobby McMann
I like the line of Dakota Joshua, Nicholas Roy and Bobby McMann, but talk about over hyping something in short order!! This reminds me of last season’s line of Nicholas Robertson, Max Domi and again, Bobby McMann, when they strung together 3-4 good games and everybody praised them as a line that had instant chemistry and would provide depth scoring and continuity throughout the lineup. That didn’t work out long term, so excuse me if I wait to see how this line does after a couple of months together.
I do believe the performance of Bobby McMann has a lot to do with how those lines perform. A picture of inconsistency, McMann can disappear for weeks before jumping in and racking up points in a few games, at which point he hits reset. This season is a glowing example of this. To start the year he produced 2G and 3pts in 4 games, which is solid production, but it was followed by an 8 game pointless streak. He followed that with 3G and 5pts in 6 games, which was once again followed by a pointless streak, this time it was 6 games long. From there he went back into production mode during the teams three game winning streak last week, where he managed to score 3G and 6pts. He didn’t produce any points against the Canadiens last night so the question now is if his scoring streak is complete or not and if he is entering a new pointless drought, how long will it last this time? When McMann is “on” he’s a handful for the other team. His combination of size, speed and a nose for the net is impressive during those stretches. However, when he’s “off” I’m not sure that he brings anything to the table because he simply disappears. During those times he’s as unnoticeable as you can get. My biggest question regarding him is why are the swings so dramatic? How does a player go from a world beater to absolutely invisible so quickly?
The Juggler
Before the game ended last night Craig Berube had jumbled the lineup again. At times we saw Joshua on a line with John Tavares and William Nylander. Easton Cowan saw at least a couple of shifts on the 3rd line and honestly, who knows what else happened because Berube changes up the lines faster than any of us can keep track of.
What we do know is Nicholas Robertson is back in Berube’s dog house. He jumped over the boards for just 11 shifts last night, played under 7 minutes and didn’t provide a shot on goal. Throughout the unprecedented amount of lineup juggling that the head coach goes through only two things are absolutely certain; the first is that Robertson will eventually have his minutes cut and Scott Laughton is the 4th line centre and nothing more. Laughton was a consistent point producer during his time with the Philadelphia Flyers, but his production simply fell off a cliff in Toronto and has resulted in Berube pigeon holing him as the 4C for all but a couple of shifts, where he played LW with John Tavares and William Nylander. He looked good for those shifts, which makes me wonder if he should get a longer look there. I’d actually argue that he should get a longer look anywhere else in the lineup, as he obviously has a history of producing offense while also playing a responsible, two-way game.
Honestly, I wonder if any line gets a long enough look to determine any type of chemistry under this head coach. We know that he works in pairs and his pairs are:
Matthew Knies – Auston Matthews
John Tavares – William Nylander
Dakota Joshua – Nicholas Roy
Steve Lorentz – Scott Laughton
This leaves Max Domi, Matias Maccelli, Calle Jarnkrok, Nicholas Robertson, Bobby McMann and Easton Cowan to fill the final 4 positions. While there is certainly a lot of lineup juggling, one thing that has also been pretty consistent is who gets the opportunity to play where. Domi and Cowan have dominated the minutes played in the top 6, while Maccelli, who was brought in to potentially be a setup man for Matthews, has seen more time with Roy and Joshua than anybody else. When he did dress in the top 6 his most common linemates were Tavares and Nylander, not Matthews and Knies. Yes, he certainly played with Matthews early in the season, but it was determined early that he wasn’t a fit there and they simply moved on. Like Laughton as the 4C, Berube makes curious decisions at times and sticks to them no matter what.
What’s more is the fact that they have versatility within the group. Players such as Lorentz, Laughton and Domi can play at centre or the wing, while Maccelli, McMann, Cowan, Robertson and Nylander all have experience playing on either wing. Despite all the combinations we’ve seen, everybody can list a line that they think could work on paper, but simply hasn’t been attempted because Berube sticks to his forward pairs so consistently. Maccelli, Matthews, Nylander, on paper, could be a fantastic group, with two natural shooters and a pass first winger. Laughton, Roy and Jarnkrok are all two-way, veteran players that have a history of producing offense in the NHL, on paper they are a possible match-up line that can shut down another teams scoring line while scoring a few themselves. Knies, Tavares and McMann (when he’s playing well) are all players that can dig in down low and work the puck to the net to score goals from the blue paint. There is little chance of any of those combinations coming to fruition due to a stubbornness to switch up the forward pairs.
The lineup is consistent and inconsistent, all at the same time.
The Pick and The Defender
It does feel different to watch the standings so closely and for such a different reason. The question over the last few seasons has been where they would place within the top 3 spots in the Atlantic. Now we’re watching the standings to see if they’ll make the playoffs at all.
For what it’s worth the Leafs have garnered a point in four straight games and have gone 4-1-1 in their last six. That had a lot to do with the return and outstanding play from Joseph Woll, but it did help close the gap a little bit.
As of this writing they are just 3pts out of a wild card spot, albeit the two teams in those spots each have 2 games in hand, which means they’re potentially out of a wild card spot by as much as 7pts. They’re also 3pts away from Montreal, who sit 3rd in the Atlantic division. Once again, Montreal has a game in hand, which made last night’s loss all the worse, but we’ll ignore that for a moment.
The Boston Bruins are 4pts ahead of the Leafs and are ranked 2nd in the Atlantic, but have played 2 more games than Toronto. That gap can be closed if they play well in the coming week but once again, it makes the pair of 5-3 losses to Boston in mid November that much worse. They were 4pt games that are currently the difference between being in a playoff spot or not and they let them slip.
Lastly, the Leafs now have the 3rd best goal differential in the Atlantic, at +2, behind only Tampa Bay and Boston. While it’s far from a flawless predictor of who will make the playoffs, the simple value of it is evident. Teams that score more than the opposition consistently win more games and generally make the playoffs. The Leafs need to work hard to make that number grow and forget everything else.
That’s the positive spin on everything. He’s the other side of the coin.
As most of us know, the Boston Bruins are in possession of the Leafs’ 1st round selection in the upcoming NHL Entry Draft. That pick is top 5 protected, so the best thing the Leafs can do is win a ton of games to ensure that the pick is as low in the 1st round as possible, or lose a ton of games to ensure that the pick lands in the top 5. While they are just 4pts our of a playoff position, they are also just 6pts away from being dead last in the NHL.
Here’s the very pessimistic view on the situation. The Leafs are just 2pts away from being the 6th worst team in the NHL, which would provide the Bruins the best possible pick that they could have gotten for Brandon Carlo at last years trade deadline and would bring back memories of the Phil Kessel trade, which was also with Boston and cost them the 2nd overall selection that year.
Talk about bad timing to have your top two goalies go down to injury.
Needless to say, the Leafs’ season hangs on the precipice at the moment. While Chris Tanev has resumed skating, he is still a ways away from his return, so there is no cavalry coming to their rescue. At least not one that hasn’t arrived already.
Troy Stecher, ladies and gentlemen. Who would have thought that he, of all players, would have been able to walk in and make as big of a difference as he has? Now on his 7th NHL team, the veteran of 575 games has 1 goal, 4pts and is +8 in his 9 appearances since being plucked off waivers from the Edmonton Oilers. Since his arrival the team has gone 5-2-2 and have looked far more composed and responsible defensively. Now, it’s true that Joseph Woll had recently returned from injury when they acquired Stecher, which certainly helped as well, but it’s tough to deny the fact that Stecher has been excellent so far in his short stint with the Leafs. He’s been so good that Berube has trusted him to play for at least 23:24 minutes in each of the past 4 games. It may be a lot to ask him to continue to do what he has over an extended time period, but for the time being he’s been a breath of fresh air and should be applauded for his efforts. He’s been a steady partner for Jake McCabe, has been solid on the penalty kill and has help with their zone exits immensely. To put it simply, he has been Chris Tanev light.
I never would have predicted it.