The 3 Most Important Things for the Maple Leafs to do Before the Playoffs

The Toronto Maple Leafs entered the Christmas Break with a great record that is, unfortunately, somewhat better than it should be, because it's based on the play of goalies that would be impossible to sustain even if you added 6x Nicklas Lidstroms to the lineup.

The Maple Leafs are clearly a playoff team, and it would take the most epic collapse in NHL history to prevent them from making the Playoffs for the 9th straight season.

Unfortunately, as you well know, the Leafs have only one a single playoff series during this entire run. That's simply not good enough, and now we have come to a major inflection point.

Marner is a free agent, Matthews is only signed to the end of next season, the blue-line is incredibly old, the centre ice position is among the thinnest in the league, and the Leafs are likely going to fire their President and GM and entire front office if they don't make it to at least the Conference Finals this year.

The 3 Most Important Things for the Maple Leafs to do Before the Playoffs

1. Sit out Matthews until he's capable of being an MVP again. If that means sit him out for the entire rest of the season, so be it. The cap space you'd get for doing so would allow the Leafs to use the NHL's dumbest loophole and ice a team way beyond the limits of the salary cap, just like Tampa and Vegas did to win Cups earlier this decade.

2. Acquire an NHL Quality Centre for the bottom of the lineup to improve depth scoring. It's ridiculous to ever play Max Domi at centre, recent hot streak not withstanding, because he's terrible at it and if he has to be on this roster, which he really doesn't, then he should be on the wing.

The Leafs dressed David Kampf, Steven Lorentz, Connor Dewar and Pontus Holmberg in their bottom six in their most recent game and that is just not enough depth scoring. You can't dress four players in your lineup who are virtually incapable of scoring. The top target here should be Dylan Cozens, but literally anyone who can score is better than what they have now.

3. Get an Elite Defenseman. I realize this is a tall task, but a team with the 20th best blue-line in the NHL likely isn't going to go very far. The Leafs have a glaring spot open in their top-four and ideally that would be filled with someone who can push everyone else down the lineup.

Do the Blue Jackets want to sell high on Zach Werenski? Is there a distressed asset out there that could potentially have top four, or better, potential? If so, it's important that the Leafs identify and acquire him.