The Maple Leafs are in first place in the Atlantic Division and are approaching full health among their player group amid a busy pre-holiday stretch of games this month.
With the latest developments on the power play covered in my earlier piece, let’s dive into the latest with the rest of the team in the newest notebook.
Notes
– Five Leafs forwards have hit the double-digit goal mark already, and they are the five guys you’d expect. I’m very curious to find out who the sixth will be. The player in the lead is Bobby McMann, who has six. Max Pacioretty is playing in the top six but has just four (partly due to injury), while Nick Robertson scored his third on Sunday, and Max Domi scored his first. It really underscores the lack of secondary scoring the team has generated in the first 30 games of the season.
– Part of what the Leafs did to change things up when down 3-1 against Buffalo was not just to unite a William Nylander – Auston Matthews – Mitch Marner line but also to match up John Tavares against the Tage Thompson line. It’s a fine approach to occasionally free up Matthews and Marner, especially when they are losing and own the last change at home, where they can further exploit matchups. However, the main reason for assembling a Matthews-Marner line is to line them up head-to-head and dominate.
Against Detroit, they gave up a poor goal to end the period. In New Jersey, they weren’t able to stop the bleeding. They gave up a goal a minute after they took a 3-1 lead against Anaheim. This is generally an excellent line, but that’s not good enough from them overall right now.
– Last season, John Tavares shot a career-low 10.4 percent and produced a 29-goal, 65-point season. This season, the production has bounced back as he’s shooting 15.2 percent and playing to a 41-goal/77-point pace over 82 games. He’s won his minutes an eye-popping 22-9 overall.
This has been an excellent start for Tavares, who is not just finishing better but also appears to really benefit from the Leafs‘ game slowing down a bit. They aren’t creating as much off the rush, and his calling card as a player has always been playing below the top of the circles in the offensive zone.
– There were some signs this week that the Leafs are starting to score crash-the-net type of goals as they’ve neared full health. Matthew Knies scored with a tip on a Marner shot from the point against Detroit, Tavares won a rebound and passed it to Pacioretty (who had an empty net), Pacioretty tipped a Timmins point shot, and Max Domi finished a sequence after the Leafs buzzed the net against the Sabres.
It hasn’t happened consistently all season, and their defense hasn’t helped enough, either. Now that the team is close to full health, we’ll see if they can string more of it together on a consistent basis.
– Morgan Rielly is on pace for his lowest point-per-game production since the 2016-17 season. That season was also the last time he didn’t have a positive goal differential at five-on-five, and not coincidentally, he’s at 20 goals for/20 goals against through 31 games this season.
Rielly didn’t have a strong playoff to end last season, and his play hasn’t been particularly strong through nearly half the 2024-25 season. This comes despite the highest offensive zone start percentage of his career. We have seen him turn it on down the stretch and in the playoffs many times, so I wouldn’t write him off at this point in the season by any means, but it’s a prolonged stretch of fairly mediocre play now.
Quotes
“Shot attempts are huge in this league. You have to get pucks to the net, and you have to get people to the net. We scored goals that way last night.
We’re practicing it, and we’ll keep working on it. We’ll stay focused on it more than anything. We have to keep the shot attempts up.
That is important: Our D shooting pucks as they did last night with the on-and-off shooting, not just dusting it off when there is no lane. Our D did a good job last off on-and-off shooting.”
– Craig Berube on the search for more consistency offensively
The Leafs’ lack of shots is noteworthy. There are far too many games where they are losing on the shot clock and it’s not due to a lack of zone time; it’s more that they aren’t getting pucks through.
Even in their game against New Jersey, they actually generated more zone time overall as the game reached later in the third period, but they are not funneling enough pucks to the net. Their game against Buffalo was just the third time this season that the team hit 40+ shots on net, and they are a middle-of-the-pack team in terms of shots on goal per game overall.
When things are tough offensively, they tend to look for perfect shots instead of simplifying by getting pucks through and crashing the net. This tendency rears its head in the playoffs every spring. We can’t expect a solution in 31 regular-season games under Berube, but they need to start trending in the right direction.
“The big shift between this year and previous years is our play on the defensive side. If you really admire what Florida did, they weren’t known as a defensive team. They kind of made a collective decision as a group that they were going to be an outstanding defensive team. It got them a championship.
I think players go through different arcs throughout their careers. Sometimes, it is about the individuals you have on the team. Sometimes, it is about the individuals you have collectively coming together and making a decision to be better defensively.
I give Craig Berube and his staff a lot of credit for that, but I give our players a lot of credit. There is a long way to go, but so far, with the commitment on the defensive side of the puck and the goaltending we have been getting, knock on wood, we just want to keep getting better at that.”
– Brendan Shanahan on the Leafs’ change under Craig Berube
Interestingly, Brendan Shanahan focused on the defensive play when their biggest issue in the playoffs has been the core’s struggles to score.
The team can play tight-checking games comfortably, and they will need to learn how to produce offense under this structure far more consistently as the season unfolds. They will likely need to add an established producer as part of the solution, but it’s also clear they now know they can’t blow the doors off of stout defensive teams and are taking a different approach to playoff preparation on the whole.
“You want to get lost to try and use your shot sometimes. So it’s a fine balance for my game personally of trying to get lost in the weeds, but still create some time and space for (Tavares and Nylander). I’ve got to maybe do a little bit better job of balancing that. I think that’s how I can contribute even more… I can’t completely neglect my making plays, so that’s what I’m working on now is being able to do both: Play really physical and make plays at the same time.”
– Pacioretty on balancing his physical game with contributing offensively
Max Pacioretty is up to nine points in 18 games (a 41-point pace, all at even strength), but it’s his physicality that has really stood out. He deserves credit for adjusting his game to fit the team’s needs. That’s not easy for a veteran who was once a star to sacrifice offense and buy into doing the “dirty work,” so to speak. It has been one of the season’s most pleasant surprises to date. I hope he can remain healthy because he has been a difference-maker.
Tweets of the Week
Max Domi
Games until first goal in 2023-24: 22
Games until first goal in 2024-25: 23— David Alter (@dalter) December 15, 2024
There were some extenuating circumstances this year in terms of playing through an injury at one point, but it is still unbelievable that this happened two seasons in a row. After Max Domi scored last season, he played to a 50-point pace the rest of the way (with a good chunk of it coming alongside Matthews).
Domi clearly provides an offensive creator on the third line capable of sparking the team, and the Leafs really need him to produce secondary scoring. The top guys are generally doing their thing; if Domi can get a third line rolling, the Leafs will be really tough to beat.
With the Leafs' win today they improved to 19-10-2 and 2 points up on the Panthers for first in the Atlantic.
At 31 games, this is now the latest into a season the Leafs have ever led the Atlantic division.
(They led at the 30 game mark in 2021-22)
— Ben Ennis (@SportsnetBen) December 16, 2024
It hasn’t been perfect, and there are clear holes they will need to address, but despite a rash of injuries to go along with an unusually weak power play, the Leafs are sitting in first with a real chance to win the division. We say it every season, but it should be a priority knowing it means a (slightly) easier playoff path.
Dakota Mermis was claimed on waivers by #UtahHC from #Leafsforever
TOR loses his $775K cap hit in their LTIR pool, while also removing his $775K cap hit from their team cap hit, for 0 net cap impact.https://t.co/nOeCnupyzJ
— PuckPedia (@PuckPedia) December 12, 2024
It was a bit of a shame to lose Dakota Mermis on waivers. We never really got to see him due to the broken jaw he suffered, but last season in Minnesota, he showed he could take regular shifts in the NHL, and a team can always use more defensive depth.
Mermis marks the second player the Leafs have lost on waivers since Brad Treliving was hired as GM. It also means the Leafs have just 47 Standard Player Contracts on file now (three open spots), giving them tons of room to add players without needing to subtract.
Five Things I Think I’d Do
1. I think the Leafs have to give this Bobby McMann – Max Domi – Nick Robertson line a little run. In this space, we have discussed pairing up Domi and Robertson because they produced reasonably well together last season. Domi is a pass-first player, and Robertson has a great release, so it makes sense.
In 2023-24, a Robertson-Domi-Jarnkrok line fared pretty well (they won their minutes 12-8) as a soft scoring line, giving the Leafs their first real third line of the season after they battled depth scoring issues (sound familiar?). I see little reason they can’t do the same with McMann on the line instead of Jarnkrok.
The Leafs should give them some run and see if they can build off of a good showing against Buffalo, even if their first game against Detroit (with Minten in the middle) was rough. They will need a little time to gel.
2. I think that also means we’re approaching a return to the Marlies for Fraser Minten. If he’s not in the top nine and isn’t playing every night, he shouldn’t be up with the team. He should be playing top-line minutes in every situation in the American League at that point.
After a hot start, Minten is pointless in his last six games and is struggling to impact games positively. He has less of a role as the team has gotten healthy and established NHLers have pushed past him.
There’s no shame in a return to the Marlies, and there’s a reason we keep talking about the difficulty for young kids to meaningfully contribute to a contender on a regular basis. It rarely happens, and when it does, it’s usually a star rookie accomplishing it. Hopefully, Minten can go down and tear it up for a few months, giving them something to think about later on this season.
3. As effective as the Jake McCabe – Chris Tanev pairing is, I think the Leafs can’t justify pairing them up all game, in part because they do not actually play that much. These are not big-minute-eating defensemen who are on the ice for 40 percent of the game.
Neither McCabe nor Tanev is within the top 60 defensemen in terms of time on ice per game. If they were, the Leafs could justify this, but the Morgan Rielly – Oliver Ekman-Larsson pair has struggled, and the third pair has been inconsistent.
It’s a shame — McCabe-Tanev is a really good pairing — but they probably need to split it up for the run of play (Rielly – Tanev, OEL – McCabe) and then reunite the pair in high-leverage situations (to close periods, certain defensive zone draws, etc.). I don’t see how they can continue to run a Rielly-OEL pairing that has been outplayed and outscored despite setting it up to produce.
4. I think if the Leafs want to have a “power” line of sorts that they can put together when they need to swing a game — i.e., the William Nylander – Auston Matthews – Mitch Marner unit — they will need to start giving them semi-regular time together. The trio has looked really good in spurts, but they have yet to score a goal together at five-on-five (over the past two seasons combined plus the start of this one, they have an even goal differential).
It’s not really a line that they can unite at the snap of a finger and know they will know what to do and how to dictate play together at five-on-five. They don’t have a long track record to work off of, having played 47 minutes together last season and 36 the season before that. It’s a good idea to keep this line in mind as an option, but they need repetition before they’re a trio the team can count on.
5. Whether Anthony Stolarz is ready next Saturday or not, I think I’d give Joseph Woll the games on Wednesday, Friday, and the following Monday. Give the Saturday game at home against the Islanders to whoever of Dennis Hildeby or Stolarz is available.
This is a good opportunity to push Woll with a bit more of a starter’s workload to evaluate how he responds. It comes right before a three-day holiday break, so it’s a good combination of a good test and opportune timing.
