I was given the topic of doing a roster analysis, but I can promise you it won’t be the result you want to hear, because what we all want to hear is that this team is a contender.
That simply isn’t true.
The Toronto Maple Leafs made another 1st round exit this season and I’ll count myself among those that were absolutely not surprised in the least. Did I want them to win? Of course. Especially against the Boston Bruins, a team that has embarrassed the Leafs far too many times in the past. However, I will admit that I emptied my betting account and placed everything on black and gold, because the failures of the core group in Toronto is just far too much to overlook at this point in time. It was easy money and I’ll be betting against them again next season. I’ll explain why.
The Forwards
We’ll start with the forward group, which is largely unchanged. There are no new signings and/or additions to talk about, but there was a subtraction. The departure of Tyler Bertuzzi, who will find himself wearing a Chicago Blackhawks jersey for the next 4 years, courtesy of the 4 year, $22M contract he signed with the club on July 1st, is the only real change to the team up front. With 21 goals and 43pts for the Leafs last season, it’s a loss to their scoring depth, but not the end of the world. He did bring an element of grit that will be missed, however. The hope from management, I assume, is that growth from young players such as Matthew Knies, Pontus Holmberg and Nicholas Robertson (if he returns), as well as growth from late bloomer Bobby McMann, can make up for the loss in scoring. That, combined with the hope that Junior standouts Easton Cowan and Fraser Minten can make the club and make a serious contribution on a nightly basis may have resulted in the lack of attention given to the forwards this offseason. Noah Gregor also departed the franchise, but with such a small role in the first place it won’t have much effect on their season.
There are whispers that the powerplay could have a different look this season, by way of the star forwards being split up. The last few years have seen a stacked 1st unit, largely featuring Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Mitch Marner, John Tavares and Morgan Rielly. Over the past 3 regular seasons they had the 1st, 2nd and 7th best powerplay ranking in the league, so it’s tough to argue with the results from game #1-82. Those same teams had the 11th, 6th and 15th best powerplays in the post season, which is just another example of their ineffectiveness during playoff hockey. Those ranks are out of 16 teams, remember, which makes it all the poorer. The further we go back the worse it looks, but it is worth noting that the one year they had a powerplay in the top half of the league was the year they beat Tampa and advanced to the 2nd round of the playoffs. If they can approach that part of the game differently it may help their chances in the post season, so I’d fully support tossing those units in the blender. With depth scoring forwards such as Matthew Knies, Max Domi, Nicholas Robertson, Bobby McMann and Calle Jarnkrok, they have pieces that will allow them to split up the stars while still giving them skill to play with, so there’s no reason to at least try it.
The penalty kill is a disaster. While healthy, expect to see David Kampf, Connor Dewar, Mitch Marner and Calle Jarnkrok as the first 4 forwards over the boards on the penalty kill. After them the leader in TOI/GP while shorthanded last season was William Nylander…. which is really not ideal. Nylander, Matthews and Holmberg were used to help kill penalties at times last season, but it appeared that the idea with Nylander and Matthews, in particular, was to create some offense while down a man. While I transcribe to the idea that when you are on the penalty kill you play it safe and get the job done, the fact that Nylander was tied for 12th in the NHL for short handed points this season shouldn’t be ignored. In certain situations (in the 3rd, down a goal and finding themselves down a man) it’s called for, but those situations are few and far between. The real problem here is that the Leafs’ penalty kill was tied for 22nd in the NHL last year over the regular season, followed by finishing 13th of 16 teams in the playoffs. The year previous they were 12th and 11th, with the year before that being 8th and 10th. The further back we go, like the powerplay, the worse it looks, but it’s safe to say that since Matthews entered the league in 2016/17 they have never been a team that could confidently kill a penalty and that’s especially true in the post season, where the only 2 “successful” years were 2020 and 2021, in which their penalty kill was fine but they still lost to the Columbus Blue Jackets and Montreal Canadiens, respectively. Those two teams wouldn’t have made the playoffs in normal years, but found themselves there due to COVID constraints, so feel free to put an asterisk by that if you’d like.
No matter how you view it, the forward group’s contribution to special teams has to receive a failing grade. A good regular season powerplay is nice and all, but not being able to get it done when it matters has reached a ridiculous level. Anyway; Special Teams: F-
Heading into the offseason I had hoped the team would look to fill the 3C position, but that didn’t get done. I’m not one to argue about addressing the blueline, because successful teams are built from the net out, but the most important position up front is down the middle and the Leafs aren’t great there. Matthews is everything you want in a 1C, Tavares is a good 2C now that he’s regressing, while he was a fantastic 2C not too long ago. They’re fine at the top of the lineup but things get a little dicey after that. I like David Kampf and what he brings to the lineup, even if he is overpaid, but he doesn’t have the offensive chops to truly fill a 3C role. My expectations for a 3C would be to do what Kampf does (PK, play shutdown hockey at 5v5 vs good players, etc), while also being able to contribute 35pts a season. Kampf has a career high 27pts and now that he’s 29 years old it’s probable that we’ve already seen his career high in that category. I’d rank him as one of, if not the top 4C in the game, but ideally he’s not anchoring your 3rd line because he kills too many plays in the offensive zone and the best teams need depth scoring. Aside from him they really only have Pontus Holmberg, Max Domi and NHL hopeful, Fraser Minten to plug in down the middle. Holmberg, like Kampf, hasn’t shown the offensive upside to play there in my opinion, while Minten should probably get some AHL games under his belt before challenging for the NHL again. Domi is more suited to the wing, but I have to admit that he exceeded my expectations while playing centre last season. If they enter the season with him at 3C it isn’t the end of the world, but they should be on the hurt for a more permanent solution there.
Your LW and RW positions are on the opposite sides of the spectrum. With two star RWers at the top of the lineup, followed by a defensively responsible 3rd liner that can contribute offensively and a 4th liner that is among the best fighters in the NHL, there’s really not much more you could ask for there. Everybody has a role and can do it successfully. If you want to be picky and don’t believe that fighting has a place in the sport, then you could argue against having Ryan Reaves on the team, but I see a club that has regressed in the grit department from last season and believe Reaves will be desperately needed this year. As for the left side, there are simply a lot of “maybe’s” there. Maybe Matthew Knies takes another step in his development and becomes a legit top 6 forward, maybe Bobby McMann can stay healthy this season and score 25 goals, maybe Nicholas Robertson re-signs and cements himself as a legitimate scoring threat, maybe Easton Cowan makes the team and can produce 35pts or more, maybe Domi rekindles his chemistry with Matthews and has a career year. Maybe. The likeliness of all of those things happening is miniscule, but one or two of those things could happen. It’s a young group as well, overall, and I’m okay with having some patience as they develop. I think my real issue with the left side is the fact that the only player there with a role other than “scorer” is Connor Dewar, who will likely play a ton of games on the 4th line, kill penalties and bring his dog-on-a-bone style of play consistently. The rest are very one-dimensional and I imagine that when you have one side of the ice that is always thinking offense, it’s a weakness that the opposing coach can exploit. If the younger players can commit themselves to developing their two-way game it would give the team a completely different vibe.
Overall, for size, skill, grit, depth scoring, a variety of styles that can help a successful penalty kill and powerplay and a group that can win in the playoffs, the forward group gets a D grade at best. The only solid position (on paper) is their right wingers, despite the fact that Calle Jarnkrok and Ryan Reaves are generally the first “salary dump” players on the trade block among fans. Both have specific and important roles that they play well and their combined $3.45M in capspace isn’t an issue. The real issue is the fact that the cap just took it’s first major bump in years and all of that extra space, plus some, went to giving Auston Matthews and William Nylander raises on their new contracts. Both players are every bit the playoff failures that Mitch Marner is, but take far less heat than he does. It’s the insistence on sticking to this pay structure that limits their ability to add better centre and defense options and now the time where they could have traded their issues to fix the roster has passed. However, Brad Treliving did what he could with…..
The Defense
Unlike the forward group, there truly are no real top end players on the blueline for this team. For my money, Rielly and Tanev are just about the perfect 2nd pairing. With a combined caphit of just $3.35M, Simon Benoit and Jake McCabe would be the ideal 3rd pair on a team that is destined for a Stanley Cup win. What this means, in short, is that they need to find a way to replace Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Timothy Liljegren with two top 4 defenders in order for me to truly believe in this defensive group. That isn’t about to happen any time soon, unless Brad Treliving pulls off a miracle, so we’re left with what can be described as a 2nd pair and two 3rd pair’s as compared to other top teams, and they will be asked to punch above their weight class come playoff time. Hopes and prayers, people.
On the positive side of things, they do have two players that are very capable of quarterbacking a powerplay. For years the team has tried to find a better option than Morgan Rielly for the top unit. From Tyson Barrie to John Klingberg, they consistently looked for a QB that could add a solid shot from the point and came up short. Rielly found his way to the top unit again every time and why not? While he doesn’t have a big shot, he does have great vision and poise and meshes well with the players around him in the offensive zone. If, in fact, the top powerplay group is split up this season, then there will be no true 1st unit, which will take the pressure off of Rielly to be the ideal fit there. Instead, two balanced units, with Rielly leading one and OEL leading the other is a possibility and that could lead to success, as both approach the task differently. Like Barrie and Klingberg, OEL has more of a shoot-first mentality on the powerplay. He could fit well with pass first wingers like Mitch Marner and Max Domi, while Rielly could be mixed in with a group of forwards that prefer to let shots fly, like Auston Matthews and/or William Nylander. How they mix and match those units is less important than the fact that they have two good to very good powerplay QBs.
The penalty kill is a disaster. I feel like I’ve said that somewhere before. The addition of Chris Tanev can definitely help in that category, but one player can’t fix larger issues. My expectation is that we’ll see Jake McCabe and Tanev as the top PK pairing this season and in theory that isn’t the worst case scenario. McCabe was 4th among Toronto defenders in TOI/GP while shorthanded last season, behind TJ Brodie, Joel Edmundson and Mark Giordano. I’ll count Tanev and McCabe as an upgrade over Brodie and Giordano, but losing Edmundson this summer will have a negative impact in multiple ways, including hurting the penalty kill. Where the team will need help is the 2nd PK unit. Simon Benoit and Timothy Liljegren, it appears, would be the next men up to kill penalties and neither has cemented himself as a true PK specialist. With that said, Liljegren placed 2nd in BLK/60 among Toronto defenders last season and Benoit placed 6th. The other 4 players in the top 6 were Mark Giordano, Joel Edmundson, TJ Brodie and Ilya Lyubushkin, none of whom are with the team anymore. Credit where credit is due, it appears that Liljegren, especially, is willing to step in front of shots to help his goaltender and Benoit is a prototypical stay at home defender, so the hope is that they can combine to make an effective pair there. This is all based on the murky situation that surrounds Jani Hakanpaa. The 6’7″ 220lb defender signed a contract with the Leafs early in free agency, but the signing hasn’t been announced by the team yet and it hasn’t been registered with the NHL. Rumours that his knees are too poor to continue playing have circulated and many are starting to believe it. We’ll have to wait until training camp for clarity, but if Hankapaa does play for Toronto this season it gives them another valuable PK option.
Overall I don’t think the defense is as improved as some do over last year. Tanev is better than Brodie and plays a solid defensive game, I’m happy to see him join the team, so they upgraded there. Their only other addition if Hakanpaa doesn’t play is Oliver Ekman-Larsson, who is more of a powerplay threat than anything. The powerplay isn’t the problem in the regular season and he’s not that good of an offensive defender to think that he can suddenly QB that unit to success in the playoffs, so I’m not exactly thrilled with that addition. Also, while Liljegren isn’t a top end defender in any one aspect of the game, he’s still a depth two-way defender who is capable of playing on your second powerplay. To me, the $3.5M given to Ekman-Larsson and the $1.5M that’s tied up with Hakanpaa would have combined to be enough to rope in a player that would have strengthened the team on the defensive side of things. Instead, we can now expect them to trade for a heavy defender at the deadline again, while overpaying for salary retention, because this group can’t defend well enough going into the playoffs. Due to the lack of serious change, lack of size, grit and defensive acumen, along with the only upgrade being an aging Tanev, I’ll grade the defense a very appropriate D as well. The saddest part of that is the fact that they had a prime opportunity to add to the top of the blueline this summer but were gun shy. Instead, they sank a combined $8M into Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Timothy Liljegren and Jani Hankanpaa and passed on some wiley veterans such as Brandon Montour, Brady Skjei, Matt Roy and Nikita Zadorov. While it’s more than possible that none of the better defenders wanted to join the Leafs, considering the fact that the core has shown no ability to compete on the biggest stage, that lies on the management team as well, as they’ve had ample opportunity to change the core over the years. Either way, I would have respected a swing for the fences in regards to defensive additions more than what they did this summer, which equates to adding numerous middling to below average defenders to a team that has enough of them already.
The Goalies
Unlike the defensive pool in free agency, there was next to nothing on the open market in terms of viable goaltenders. A selection of backups were available, sure, but saying you would have preferred one of the others over Anthony Stolarz is more opinion than anything. The addition they did make is encouraging. There aren’t many NHLers that stand at 6’6″ 240lbs, but Stolarz is one of them. He covers a ton of net without having to do anything and has had good to great results as a backup over the past couple of years. He wants to compete for the starting role, but has said that he’s there to support Joseph Woll whenever he isn’t in the crease. The issue I had was his lack of NHL experience. With 108 NHL games under his belt and no more than 28 in a single season, he’s largely untested. Can he perform well for 35-40 games a season? Can he stay healthy with the extra work load? There are questions that will be answered this year, but the hope from me was that they would have landed a goaltender that could have stabilized the crease a little more. Joseph Woll, as we all know, has trouble staying healthy. He was terrific in the playoffs against Boston, sporting a 0.964SV% and 0.86GAA, but missed Game 7 due to injury, leaving Leafs Nation wondering what could have been. With just 36 regular season NHL games under his belt, he too is very short on experience, but those games have been encouraging to say the least. He looks like he has the ability to become a 1A or 1B goalie in the NHL, which is what the Leafs were betting on when they signed him to a 3 year, $3.66M contract.
There isn’t a lot to speak of in terms of goaltending, mostly due to the fact that neither of Toronto’s goalies have done much to speak of throughout their short careers. At the end of the day they had to move on from Ilya Samsonov, who struggled mightily at times, especially at closing out a series. I’m going to say that Woll is the better option, but with so little work under his belt and an inability to stay healthy, that’s more hopeful thinking than fact. Meanwhile, the team walked into last season with Woll as their backup and Martin Jones as the 3rd stringer. This year it will be Stolarz and Matt Murray filling those roles. Woll outplayed his expectations and Martin Jones was great at times, fully earning the 3 year contract he received from San Jose. I can’t envision Stolarz and Murray rising to those heights, so I’ll say that the goaltending, overall, has taken a step back as well, but if Woll stays healthy and takes another step forward in his development the backup and 3rd stringer simply won’t matter, because they’ll have their starting goaltender. If I’m giving a grade to the goalies, it’s a C with a hopeful B+ if Woll steps up. Stopping pucks hasn’t generally been the problem for Toronto, especially in the playoffs, whereas scoring them has been, so I’m not about to pick on the goalies.
The Coach
The team doesn’t consist of just the players on the ice. Obviously coaching is a major part of the game. The right coach with the right team is imperative to winning the Stanley Cup.
Sheldon Keefe was the wrong coach. Period.
Keefe was behind the bench for the play-in loss against an inferior Columbus team, where he was outcoached by veteran bench boss John Tortorella. The following year he was there for the 1st round loss of another inferior team, the Montreal Canadiens, where he was again outcoached, this time by rookie Dominique Ducharme. That is to say that no matter who was on the other bench, they consistently outmaneuvered Keefe despite experience or the quality of their roster. Sheldon Keefe is as much to blame for the disaster that has been this team as any skater on the roster and he should have been fired years ago.
I’m not going to say that Craig Berube is 100% the solution, but considering the guy he replaced I’m going to go ahead and say they have upgraded in this area. I do believe that the hard-ass coach label is a little overblown, but Berube isn’t about to tell the team to “have fun with it” if they find themselves going into another Game 7 come spring time. This is the biggest difference this year and like the other positions I’ll give coaching a grade. A solid “B” is deserved here, but that’s a country mile better than the F that Keefe earned over his tenure in Toronto.
If you disagree with that F rating, all I have to say is that the playoffs matter more than a bunch of regular season wins. Yes, you have to get to the playoffs to have a chance to win, but there’s no excuse when you keep getting there with authority and shitting the bed. Keefe should have been fired and major changes made to the roster after they lost to Montreal in the playoffs. The only positive is that the Keefe era is finally over.