There’s no “New Year, new me” with the Toronto Maple Leafs. No matter what is done regarding roster changes or coaching changes, there is always going to be that barrier that says “don’t feel too good about this team, you’re only going to get hurt.” There are 57 years of evidence, multiple superstars, different playing styles, and coaching philosophies that point to the Leafs continually breaking their fans’ hearts. You can counterbalance the excitement of Berube’s coaching style looking like it could work in the playoffs, Stolarz’s goaltending, Tanev’s shutdown defending, and the arrival of some secondary scoring with the significant injury question marks for players like Auston Matthews and Anthony Stolarz, and the drop in scoring. The Leafs so far this year have shown they are a very good team succeeding despite some flaws but that doesn’t change the biggest issue and that is the Maple Leafs ability to catch lightning in a bottle at the right time of the year and have things go right when it counts. Optimistically, more than any other time since the Burns or Quinn eras, the Leafs seem to have the right people in place (save for maybe needing one or two additions), and it will be interesting to see if Coach Craig Berube and Captain Auston Matthews are the right leaders to get the best out of the Leafs when it matters the most.
Here are some other stray thoughts:
Best trade deadline ever
Is asking for the best Maple Leafs trade deadline ever setting the bar too high for Brad Treliving? Yeah, probably and it could be a tad unfair.
That said, there probably needs to be a firm understanding that Joel Edmundson, Ilya Lyubushkin, and Connor Dewar type tweaks are not what the Maple Leafs need either, and Toronto needs to operate under the idea that their depth will come from players presently on their roster, any new acquisition should be pushing players back in the lineup, not fighting to be a regular in it.
The biggest area of focus has to be at centre. Max Domi and the Maple Leafs’ third line have done an excellent job of taking some of the pressure off Brad Treliving and making his need for another centre less immediate, and Fraser Minten will also be a viable depth option after a bit more development time. Both players still have some warts that need to be worked around and both have their situational advantages and disadvantages.
As things currently sit, Auston Matthews is probably the only all-situation centre the Leafs have. Both Tavares and Domi lend themselves best to the offensive end of the ice and players like Kampf, Dewar, Lorentz, and Holmberg, the defensive end. Finding another 200-foot option seems like the best course of action but not the easiest, although the Leafs’ recent success with bringing in Ryan O’Reilly shows why it is worth pursuing this option over half measures.
The idea of a Jonathan Toews return is an interesting one, as it certainly works out well for a team that isn’t rich on picks or prospects but is a rather large gamble on a position the Leafs need to get right.
Similarly, treating Yanni Gourde as a primary target seems like skipping Plans A and B and jumping straight to Plan C. This feels a bit like pursuing Joel Edmundson again.
The Leafs are light on assets and light on cap space and that makes things difficult. What also makes things difficult is the fact that another defenceman who is capable of playing in the Leafs’ top four would also be beneficial. This isn’t so much a criticism of the Leafs bottom pairing as it is an unwillingness to see a Morgan Rielly and Philippe Myers pairing in late April. The Leafs can’t always be one injury or illness away from their blueline turning to poop.
With the Leafs presently 6th in points and 6th in point percentage, sitting at the top of the Atlantic Division, the Leafs look like a team that Brad Treliving should be aggressively trying to put over the top.
Streakiness
A lot gets made of streaks. Max Domi certainly had a rough streak to start the season and his linemate, Nick Robertson, held onto his roster spot by a thread through the entirety of his rough patch. Now together with Bobby McMann, both Domi and Robertson are living the high life on the right side of their ebb and flow production style. That’s pretty much the case for most of the league.
It’s because of those ebbs and flows that it isn’t worth getting too upset over the state of Matthew Knies. Knies is probably being harder on himself than he needs to be and that is going to hold him back further. Knies is also best when paired with Matthews and that has been less of an option of late and that can’t be helping him either. There’s not much that Knies is going to do as a low net presence on a line with Tavares when Tavares is already doing good work in that area himself. His success will return, likely when the captain does.
Streaks are going to happen and it is interesting to see Craig Berube’s approach to them. For the most part he seems quite comfortable with letting his players ride them out, keeping them in the place that he initially wanted them to be. This seems frustrating from an outsider’s perspective, but it is probably welcomed in the locker room. I’ll admit with Max Domi, keeping him at centre never seemed like a good idea to me and putting him on the wing looked like the easy way out, but Berube showed commitment to Domi and was very aware of his need at centre, and made it work.
With Knies it seems like calling for a bottom six checking role in the interim could be the answer but ultimately that is not what the Leafs want for Knies so keeping him in the top six makes sense, even if it isn’t with the most ideal linemates.
The lesson I’m learning is don’t panic because Craig Berube won’t. It’s just like with most things Leafs, it will be interesting to see how streakiness is addressed come playoff time.
Home and Away splits
Some of the cold water on the Leafs success this season might be that their home record is a big part of that and skews the results. The Leafs are 15-7-0 when playing in Toronto compared to their 9-6-2 record on the road, which is still quite serviceable. The 22 to 17 game difference is amplified further in January with the remaining 12 games having an eight home/four away split, leaving the Maple Leafs with just 11 home games in their final 31 games. This will be balanced out over February (just one home game out of eight games) and early March (one home game in the first five games of the month.)
The impact of the extended road trip through February and early March isn’t a huge source of concern if you look at the more recent road experiences for the Leafs. Toronto is 6-2-0 on the road dating back to November 30th, so perhaps “problem solved?” Where it remains something to watch is the fact that the Leafs haven’t had a road trip longer than two games so far this year and now having two four game road trips and two three game road trips through February and March could be impactful.
If there is something else to take away from the Leafs home success it is that Craig Berube appears to be more aggressive about getting the matchups he wants on the ice out there. This seems to show up in Jake McCabe’s icetime as Berube more frequently deploys his shutdown defenceman at home when he gets the last change. McCabe averages over 2 minutes more a night at 5v5 than on the road.
As much as road success is a possibility, it is important to note the Leafs do have a couple more road games remaining than the Panthers and that could end up being impactful to the playoff seeding.
