Three questions for the Maple Leafs to answer and why it’s time to experiment

Fans and team staff inevitably look at the NHL schedule differently.

Fans are watching for wins and losses, with pretty simple answers: if the team wins a lot they’re good, if they don’t they’re bad, and the players who score the most are the best. And those simple conclusions are correct.

For team staff, there’s certainly that most-pressing need to win — and win often enough to be guaranteed a playoff spot, ideally a good one. But staff are also taking fair stock of the individual players they have, how they fit together, as well as figuring out the types of weaknesses that could be exposed in the playoffs before that time of year rolls around.

In order to fix your problems you first have to establish what they are, and because hockey is so random you need to give different ideas (lines, systems or personnel) a good run of games to fairly assess them. Good teams need a full 82-game schedule to try out as many different looks as possible.

What that means for the Maple Leafs, now on the other side of the Christmas break, is that it’s crunch time, baby. They’re extremely likely to make the playoffs, and it’s time to figure out what they’ve really got. Which brings me to the questions I still have about them that will need answering.

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Can we please see Toronto spread their top guys across three lines?

I have some bias here, but I legitimately believe Sheldon Keefe to be an excellent coach. Win or lose on Friday night, he’s going to finish his 300^th game with the highest points percentage of any coach in NHL history at that marker (stats via Hockey Reference).

* coaching 300th game Friday

Part of his success has come from not overthinking it: play your good players together and play them as much as they can handle.

But for the love of goodness, can we please see this team play with its superstars spread across three lines just to see how it works…for like two weeks? You can always change it back.

I hope Keefe hasn’t avoided this because none of those stars want to be forced to play without another elite talent. He’s the coach, and he wouldn’t be asking them to do it forever (just a couple weeks!), and if the players have that much say over the lineup, he’s got bigger problems anyway.

The easy option….

Knies-Matthews-Jarnkrok
Bertuzzi-Tavares-Nylander
Robertson-Domi-Marner
Gregor-Kampf-McMann

But I’d rather see a top three lines of:

Knies-Matthews-Jarnkrok
Gregor-Tavares-Nylander
Bertuzzi-Domi-Marner
Robertson-Kampf-McMann

Nick Robertson doesn’t work in that fourth line spot, but this is the time to experiment, and you can’t build every version of your lineup worrying only about his development. (Also, if every version of your lineup makes you think “this guy doesn’t quite work there,” you’re beginning to get the answer you may not have wanted, but need.)

Lines two and three would be super different style-wise. Noah Gregor can forecheck and get pucks for John Tavares and William Nylander, plus they all like to shoot it; while Bertuzzi-Domi-Marner is full of annoying, small-area passing players.

Maybe that’s too much of the same on both lines. Maybe my ideas are terrible. But maybe not. Either way, the Leafs should take the time to find these things out before trading assets for help.

Can the Leafs get the defenceman they need? And by the way, what is that, exactly?

The talk goes in circles: Toronto needs a defensive defenceman. They need an offensive defenceman. They need both. And on and on.

But I thought Keefe made a good point about what Mark Giordano‘s return to the lineup brings when he said: “…It’s maybe understated how he can move the puck in all three zones quickly and efficiently.” Giordano is able to make a lot of good, short passes that help them break out of their own end.

As of Friday, the Leafs are 10^th in stretch passes per game, and 28^th in stretch pass completion percentage. They’re trying a lot of long bomb passes that result in either turnovers, or tipped-in dump-ins with no pressure. (This is somewhat on the forwards too, who love to fly the zone.)

So the Leafs need defensive D, yes, but they need the kind that can also make a breakout pass (like Chris Tanev). They don’t need someone who can score a bunch, per se, they just need a guy or two who can make plays with the puck.

Let’s take quick stock of the Leafs’ defence corps, when healthy:

Morgan Rielly is Morgan Rielly, a legit number one guy (even if you like other teams’ number one more). TJ Brodie has taken a sizeable step back to being a defensive second pair guy, which is off-set by Jake McCabe taking a big step forward to me (he has 10 points in his past 14 games to go with his defence, quick breakout touches, and hitting). I wouldn’t play McCabe with Rielly – they both make the odd risky decision and wouldn’t work together – but he can anchor Toronto’s second pair.

From there, they’ve got a lot of third pair guys who we can call anywhere from generously number fours to number seven level guys. Timothy Liljegren, Mark Giordano, Simon Benoit, Conor Timmins, William Lagesson … they’re all fine, with Liljegren clearly the best of that bunch. But the Leafs need the kind of player I’m referring to who can slot above those guys to go on a meaningful playoff run. It won’t happen without help, it just isn’t there internally.

And finally, what’s the deal with Toronto’s lack of success against weak opponents? And does it mean anything about the team at large?

This is where the Leafs sit against the NHL’s bottom seven teams (San Jose, Chicago, Anaheim, Columbus, Ottawa, Buffalo, Calgary) so far this season, by points percentage. The other top teams in the East are highlighted.

My gut is that the Maple Leafs are, more than most, a top-heavy team. And you just can’t get up for 82 games, so those top guys tend to not bring their best against these opponents, and the game gets left up to a fairly average rest of the team.

The problem there is two-fold: 1. your other players take cues from the top guys so I doubt they’re overly fired up for those games either, and 2. Keefe still plays the bejeezus out of his stars in those games, even when they’re not playing well.

Does that tell us anything new about what they are or need heading into the playoffs, or does it solidify what we already knew about how dependent the Leafs are on their stars? Seeing how Ryan O’Reilly gave them another dimension in last year’s playoffs was a reminder that, when those top guys aren’t on, it sure would be nice for the Leafs to have another threat layer.

If they spread their talent over a few lines, maybe they could at least confirm that?

In all, the Leafs have established themselves as a good team that is seeking answers in net (which is so obvious it’s barely worth mentioning), as well as for the questions above. Once they get through January they’ll have more answers and it will be time to start trying to fix the problems.

Every team in the salary cap era has a few.

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