After their five-game winning streak came to an end last Thursday, the Maple Leafs are now coming off two disappointing losses to the Hurricanes and Canucks, the latter of which generated some mixed post-game reaction from the leadership group.
I’ll have some thoughts on the team’s five-on-five play in a separate piece coming soon, but for now, let’s jump into the Notes, Quotes, Tweets of the Week, and Five Things I Think I’d Do.
Notes
– I mentioned last week that the Leafs have become one of the worst teams in the league with their goalie out (they have now given up 13 goals and only scored twice). Last week, we saw some good examples, as down two, they pulled the goalie against Carolina and were immediately scored on; against Vancouver, they didn’t even bother to pull their goalie down three with some five-odd minutes left to give it a run and, if nothing else, break the shutout. This used to be a weapon for them that they could turn to and bail them out of the games, and now they can barely make a mark.
– Again, the same thing applies to the power play. There has been a lot of talk about the players — it’s the same players, and the playoff failures have left deep scars — but the truth is that these have been good-to-great regular season units that are now completely falling off. When Sheldon Keefe took over and loaded up the top unit, the power play finished each season under Keefe:
- 6th
- 16th
- 1st
- 2nd
- 7th
Now, they can barely gain the zone and look directionless. It’s not like the coaching staff is switching the players or doing anything different personnel-wise. It’s the same players achieving worse results. That points to coaching, clear as day.
– The power play aside, the Leafs are scoring way more recently. Over the past month or so — since December 11 — they are sixth in the league in goals per game at 3.31. The offense is starting to come, but defensively, it has opened up, too, as they are 21st in goals against per game at 3.25. You can see the neutral zone opening up both ways, which makes for more entertaining hockey and offense, but it’s a notably different brand than how they started the season.
– In the nine games since the Christmas break, William Nylander has one goal and three assists, the same output as Steven Lorentz. Nylander battled a bit of a slump last season in January, too, as he didn’t produce in six of eight games.
The slumps will happen, but if Nylander is not driving the second line, almost all of the heavy lifting falls on the top line, especially with an inept power play. This is fine against the Islanders and Flyers of the league, but when they play the better teams, they need three lines rolling, and right now, arguably none of them are. Berube has blended the lines in each of the past two games to try to spark something.
– Since coming to Toronto, Max Domi has shot just 6.3 percent, well below the league average for forwards (the NHL average is generally north of 9 percent). In Domi’s entire career before arriving in Toronto — 581 games, to be exact — he shot 10.3 percent.
Domi’s three goals this season came in three successive games, and since then, he’s at 11 games and counting without a goal. Domi has a good shot, is skilled, and is also a strong skater, but he is not putting it together and producing nearly enough offense. There are too many games where he is a total non-factor. He’s a player the Leafs are really banking on to create secondary scoring and to whom they committed notable dollars and term.
– Earlier this season, Oliver Ekman-Larsson played with a physical and pest-like element to his game, but it has seemingly evaporated over the past month. In this space, we previously flagged an insightful comment from Paul Maurice on the subject, as the Panthers head coach noted that OEL has always had it in him but played so much that he had to pick and choose his spots.
Halfway through the season, OEL is averaging over 21 minutes per game. Last season in Florida, he averaged just 18:24 per game. It is a big jump, and he’s an aging player. He’s a useful defenseman who can provide a bit of everything — puck movement, reasonable secondary unit penalty pilling, some jam, etc. — but we have seen what OEL is on a Cup team: a #5 defenseman, not a top-four mainstay/lynchpin. That’s fine — he’s paid as such — but playing big minutes so high up the lineup hurts everyone involved.
Quotes
“I liked it. I thought we played well, I really did. The last couple of games, we’ve been giving up plays to teams that aren’t missing on them.”
– Mitch Marner when asked about the Leafs‘ effort level against the Canucks
“Not good enough, out-worked us, out-competed us, and that’s why they won. We’re not worried about [the opponent]. We need to play our game better; that’s why we lost.”
– Chris Tanev on the loss to the Canucks
If we take a step back, I can understand Mitch Marner‘s perspective to some degree. The Canucks put 18 shots on net and benefited from some deflections for goals. Kevin Lankinen was good in the Vancouver net. There were long stretches when the Leafs tilted the ice.
All of that said, the Leafs were coming off a bad showing against Carolina and facing a reeling (and tired) Canucks team. It was set up to be a response game for their top line, in particular. The team put 20 shots on net, and the power play was abysmal.
It’s not just Marner, either. Auston Matthews was casual about the loss to Carolina in his post-game media availability, too, and didn’t exactly have a response game on his end against Vancouver. Even Berube wasn’t exactly pointed with his criticism in his post-game press conference, as he noted the bounces not going their way.
Conversely, there is Chris Tanev, who has been a part of some serious playoff runs in the league, calling it for what it is: not good enough.
Most people are reasonable enough to understand that a team will not have its best stuff in all 82 games, but there needs to be more honesty and self-reflection among the top players when things aren’t going well. They are the leaders by default, and they ultimately drive the bus.
It is a problem if major leaders on the team think 20 shots on net and a shutout loss at home at the hands of a team that played in a different city the night before is acceptable or worth trying to explain away. A simple “We need to be better and are capable of a lot more” would have been welcome. But I’m not sure we’ve ever heard the team’s best players readily admit that they needed to be better.
“A lot of it is [Carolina’s] lineup. They are pretty spread out with three lines. We need some balance with our D pairs tonight going against them. They have some good skill on each line with size — Necas, Svechhnikov, Staal. They have it spread out pretty well.”
– Craig Berube on why he united Rielly-Tanev ahead of their game against Carolina
It was interesting that Berube noted that he paired Morgan Rielly and Chris Tanev together due to the opposition’s lineup and, specifically, the Hurricanes’ spread-out depth. To me, it reads as though the coaching staff rates Oliver Ekman-Larsson higher regarding his ability to defend and wanted to combat Carolina’s depth by spreading out OEL and Tanev in the absence of McCabe.
Rielly leads the Leafs’ defense in even strength time on ice per game, but they shelter him and do not trust him to do much actual defending. It’s palatable when he is producing offensively and the power play is humming, but neither is happening. They are now awkwardly shifting him around the lineup, making it a bad situation all around, considering he’s making $7.5 million for five more seasons.
“Just my aggressiveness. Trying to be thinking less on the ice. I came in this year thinking a little bit too much and trying to plan where I was on the ice and trying to fit perfectly into the systems. But it’s still, at the end of the day, a hockey game. You’re still reading, reacting. And then once I started playing like that, skills take over, and I can trust myself. And then I think things turned appropriately for me.”
– Bobby McMann on elevating his game as the season has progressed
It feels like ages ago that Bobby McMann was a healthy scratch to open the season, but since then, he has shown himself as the Leafs’ sixth-best forward.
McMann isn’t much of a playmaker — he has just 15 assists in 102 games in the NHL so far, compared to 27 goals — and therefore can struggle when playing with the Leafs’ top players, who like to move the puck constantly. But McMann does two things very well: skating and shooting. When he shoots a ton, keeps it simple, and uses his speed — be it to get in on the forecheck, drive the net, or backcheck — he is a really good player.
Tweets of the Week
Joel Farabee on the fight with Connor Dewar:
"Just was a little quiet in the building so I figured I'd ask him. Thankfully he gave me one, he's a really good guy."#Flyers pic.twitter.com/qfJv48uVwH
— Flyers Nation (@FlyersNation) January 8, 2025
Kudos to Connor Dewar for being a willing combatant. He has settled in as a prototypical energy guy/penalty killer, similar to Lorentz. All three of the Leafs’ fourth liners are excellent penalty killers, and it’s nice to see a fourth line with real defensive utility. L4 did a good job starting periods against the Canucks (it was the follow-up shifts and the one period L4 didn’t start where the Leafs got burned).
Dewar’s next step is to find a way to occasionally contribute offensively. He has missed several prime chances lately and has just three assists in 26 games this season. While he missed preseason and training camp due to his recovery from shoulder surgery, he’s been back for two months now and has to find a way through this offensively.
since pacioretty returned from his hamstring injury, the line of pacioretty-tavares-nylander has not been great
in 16 games, they are controlling 46% of the shot attempts and 43% of the expected goals
this is not a cup contender second line, the leafs need way more from them
— Willyston Riellander (@nylanderthews) January 11, 2025
Since Max Pacioretty returned from injury, he has six points in 17 games, and three of those points came in one game against Anaheim. He can’t play in the top six when he produces once in every four games.
At the same time, Nylander has gone cold offensively, which has started to impact other areas of his game as he pushes for offense. The entire line is struggling, and with the third line also running cold after a couple of hot weeks, it has made the Leafs a one-line team.
Matthew Knies is 11th in scoring among players selected in the 2021 NHL draft with 62 points in 123 games, seventh with 31 goals. The #Leafs picked him 57th overall.
— Terry Koshan 🇺🇦 (@koshtorontosun) January 8, 2025
This is a big development for the Leafs at any point, but especially when they haven’t drafted very high or very much for years. They will hope to strike some gold in the coming years with Fraser Minten, Easton Cowan, Nikita Grebenkin, and at least one of their goalie prospects (among others).
While the team has drafted some decent players over the years, almost all of them have been traded away (Timothy Liljegren, Rasmus Sandin, Sean Durzi, etc.), making Matthew Knies the only draft pick they’ve truly hit on as a homegrown core player since selecting Matthews first overall and Woll in the third round back in 2016.
Five Things I Think I’d Do
1. On principle alone, I think the power play should be split into two units at this point. Yes, it does look good at times with five forwards, and yes, they have had some success with Nylander and Marner leading the charge on the half-walls. But we’re halfway through this season, and they are in the league’s bottom half.
Every time the power play looks like it takes a step forward, it takes two steps back. They don’t deserve to be automatically thrown over the boards. Since they posted a ridiculous 50% month in February 2024, they are 29th in the league on the power play(!). That’s a 67-game span, nearly an entire season’s worth of play, and it doesn’t include their seven playoff games, which were even worse.
It has been so unfathomably bad for so long that they can’t keep turning to the same group without hesitation. There was so much talk about accountability in the summer; well, here’s a situation that calls for it.
2. In terms of how to split up the power-play units, I think I’d start with keeping the top line together (Marner and Matthews on the half-wall, Knies in front) and then give them McMann as a bumper option, where he was excellent with the Marlies and has sporadically flashed potential with the Leafs. I’d place OEL up top, too; if nothing else, it removes the staleness of Rielly.
That leaves Nylander and Domi on the half-wall on the other unit, Rielly up top, Tavares either in front or in the bumper, and likely Pacioretty in the other spot. They each receive a minute, and it’s a competition from there.
3. At five-on-five, I think the Leafs’ forwards and defense pairings are fine. At some point, it’s not really the lines; it’s the players needing to play better, especially the top players.
On the backend, I think Philippe Myers has played himself ahead of Conor Timmins for the time being in the event that Jake McCabe can return this week.
4. I think Ryan Reaves’ performance after he was reinserted into the lineup against the Flyers pretty much summed up his season to this point. A puck deflected in the Leafs’ net off his stick, he watched Dewar fight, and he fanned on a wide-open look in the slot. He didn’t make a notable physical impact on the game, to say nothing of the lack of a response to Garnet Hathaway knocking one of the Leafs’ best defensemen out of the lineup. He was a complete non-factor.
Reaves has played 27 games this season, has yet to fight, and doesn’t look particularly engaged from a physical or emotional standpoint. They do not need to put him on waivers for no reason right this second, but his roster spot should be considered an easy path to create cap space if and when they need it as the trade deadline approaches. Waiving Reaves opens up $1.15 million in cap space, and I highly doubt he will be claimed (and if he is, so be it). The writing is on the wall here; it’s just a matter of when everyone wants to be honest about it.
5. In net, I think the Leafs need to be mindful of Dennis Hildeby’s development. Last season, he appeared in 41 games with the Marlies and played well. So far this season, he has played a grand total of 13 games between the Leafs and Marlies. With the Leafs, he hasn’t looked ready for the NHL.
Matt Murray wasn’t good in his brief stint with the Leafs this season, but Hildeby hasn’t been much better, and at some point, they have to think about the player and do what’s best for his development. Barely playing isn’t helping him improve, and neither is struggling in the NHL.
