The Maple Leafs hit the halfway mark of the season in unfamiliar territory: on the outside looking in of a playoff spot, in a dog fight to make the cut. 

We’ve spent a lot of time in the first half of the season discussing the team’s five-on-five struggles, head-scratching lineup deployment, power-play issues, and some underwhelming individual performances — namely, Auston Matthews, who until recently was tracking around 75th among forwards in points per game, which is obviously not going to cut it, especially from a player with the second-highest cap hit in the league. 

While I’ve argued many times that head coach Craig Berube’s job is deserving of heavy scrutiny, it is quite clear that Leafs management does not want to make (or pay?) for a change behind the bench. Therefore, the best we can hope for is internal improvement. 

When a team is winning games, it is very easy to overlook issues with the sustainability of its play. Last season, from March 1 through to the end of the regular season, the Leafs owned the sixth-best points percentage in the league en route to winning the Atlantic Division. At the same time, they ranked 25th in five-on-five expected goals and were an unfathomable dead-last in shot attempt share. Despite a really good, deep roster, the Leafs were routinely outplayed. 

The team was buoyed by great goaltending, an elite power play (the Leafs were fifth in that time period, clicking at just under 30%), a big veteran defense that made it difficult to penetrate the house, and the team’s star power carrying the mail offensively. But it wasn’t sustainable. As we’ve repeated a million times in this space, the Panthers out-attempting the Leafs 25-0 on home ice to start Game 7 was a case of the chickens coming home to roost. The Leafs played that way for two-plus months, and consequently, Florida dominated them with the season on the line.

After offseason changes that, in my estimation, made the Leafs a deeper team in their bottom six, I wanted to see them focus on a team-oriented style, grinding and controlling play, and fixing some of the issues that underpinned their playoff defeat. 

I don’t want to relitigate the first few months of the Leafs’ 2025-26 season, but none of the above-mentioned goals were achieved. Add in the power play turning into the league’s worst unit and the goaltending injuries precipitating a significant drop-off in net to start the season, and this time, the team’s results spoke for themselves. 

The Leafs are keeping the same coach (for now) who initially helped steer them in the wrong direction, and it’s clear to everyone now that this isn’t a simple matter of the players failing a good coach. Berube needs to make changes for the better. On that front, I believe the Leafs’ first-half struggles forced Berube’s hand, to some degree, and we are starting to see tangible changes in the team’s play/structure. 

The Power Play

The most straightforward, easily identifiable change is that the organization dismissed Berube’s handpicked assistant coach, Marc Savard.

Yes, the Leafs lost Mitch Marner in the offseason, and he’s really effective on the power play (in the regular season). Still, he shouldn’t be the difference between a very good unit and literally the worst unit in the league. The Leafs’ power-play entries were poor, and once they gained the zone, they appeared to have no plan beyond hoping the top players would figure it out on their own, without any structure or semblance of set plays. 

We don’t need to labour much to demonstrate the immediate impact of moving on from Savard. The Leafs are 5/9 on the power play since the change, and it has played a significant role in them picking up seven of eight points in those four games.

The most important differences include using the bumper effectively, whether by working pucks there for slot shots—like the Matthew Knies goal against Ottawa and the Matthews goal against Winnipeg—or for redirects, like the Nic Roy goal against New Jersey. The coaching staff is also trusting different options like Matias Maccelli and Nick Robertson to make plays on the man advantage, and it is paying off so far.

At some point, the power play will cool off — and we’ll see if they can make smart adjustments from there — but the bar was so incredibly low, and the positive impact has been immediate.

The Five-on-Five Play

Simply improving the power play will make a big difference in racking up points and climbing the standings. Ultimately, the Leafs’ five-on-five play will make or break them, though. 

On November 24, Berube was asked whether he was considering tactical changes:

We made some adjustments already, and I think they have been really good. I don’t think a drastic change to the whole system… I am not really thinking about that at all.

While Berube isn’t exactly one to overshare publicly (hey, what’s up with Anthony Stolarz!?), I think we can ascertain what he might’ve been alluding to.

In terms of not making any drastic changes, I believe this applies to their defensive-zone coverage. They are still generally content to allow the perimeter activity and focus on protecting the house. Their wingers are pressing up a bit higher on opposing defensemen, but generally speaking, Berube is not reinventing their defensive-zone coverage or neutral-zone schemes. It’s more about minor tweaks, a natural part of every season anyway. 

So, what has changed?

First, there are the personnel tweaks. Berube made those above-mentioned comments nine days after the franchise claimed Troy Stecher off waivers, and it’s not a stretch at this point to suggest Stecher has made a significant difference. Since the claim, he has averaged 20:15 per game, the fifth-highest mark on the team. As Alec recently noted after the win over the Jets, Stecher is up 22-12 in five-on-five goals in his 21 games as a Leaf and is also the only Leaf regular (forward or defense) above water in five-on-five shot attempt share at the moment.

From Stecher’s first game with the team, it was clear how he could impact their breakouts with his feet. The clip above was largely a nothing sequence overall, but first, he led a clean breakout with his legs. He continued up ice, then hustled back to regain the puck and lead another exit. Nothing of note transpired on the shift, but simply getting the puck out without a high flip that would’ve relinquished possession and led to more defensive-zone time is a big win for this group.

Seemingly every night, Stecher is good for a solo effort breakout or two with little plays like these: 

It feels like Stecher has been contagious within the group to some degree, on and off the ice. It’s tempting to suggest that he’s helped the cause simply by adding a defenseman to the lineup who hasn’t been Berube’d into throwing the puck off the glass all night, and there’s probably some truth in that.

Stecher also allowed the Leafs to shift Jake McCabe back to the left, where he’s much more effective. In Stecher’s first game as a Leaf against St. Louis, McCabe was on the right side, paired with Simon Benoit. Eventually, McCabe played a notable run on the left with Stecher on the right, affording McCabe a better partner while on his strong side. Sometimes, it’s really as simple as optimizing the personnel in common-sense ways. 

In terms of the structure of the Leafs’ play, their breakouts are using the middle of the ice more lately, and they are exiting their zone cleaner as a result. This has a domino effect down the ice: building speed through the neutral zone allows a team to dump and chase on its toes.

The example below is a nice sequence: three straight passes, facilitated by Morgan Rielly bumping it to Scott Laughton in the middle of the ice, where Laughton had the time and space to make another pass. Lorentz collected the puck with speed, dumped it in mid-stride, and recovered it. The Leafs got a decent shot on net, followed by an offensive-zone faceoff. 

It’s a little thing, but it’s a big thing. A team needs to stack these types of plays on top of each other to tilt the ice in its favour. There is a more concerted effort from the Leafs to break pucks out through the middle of the ice to generate speed and give themselves a chance of sustaining offensive-zone time. Early in the season, high and off the glass was often automatic. Frequently, there was no center even swinging low as an option, leaving the defensemen no choice. 

Our first example featured a defenseman bumping the puck to the middle. Below is an example of a winger executing it, as Max Domi took the pass and immediately moved it to the middle. Even though the pass was off, it still opened up the play, rather than mindlessly hammering it off the wall. When OEL had the puck, his read was to the middle. When Matthews took possession, he gained the zone easily with speed. 

The Leafs want and need to forecheck to create offense, but if they can move it cleanly and allow their players to skate it into the zone with control of the puck, it makes their lives a lot easier. At times, the Leafs are skating it in more, and a lot of it is simply a byproduct of moving up the ice cleaner off the breakout. 

This isn’t to suggest the team no longer uses the boards or the glass — they do, and every team does/has to — but crisper breakout sequences are happening on a nightly basis. It’s a matter of repetition now. Breaking out cleaner feeds the forecheck, as we saw in one of the clips above.

Now, the signs of improvement haven’t exactly led to sterling underlying numbers in this time period. I don’t want to mislead anyone into thinking the Leafs are using the middle of the ice more and have therefore solved their five-on-five issues. They are still among the league’s bottom teams in puck possession over the past month and change. But a slight uptick has transpired, and a few rotten games have really skewed their numbers: 

The Leafs are beginning to manage games a little better, and coupled with their lineup getting healthier, they are starting to show visible signs of improvement. 

Additionally, the rush defense that plagued them at the start of the season (again, why was that even an issue for a veteran team like this?) has been cleaned up with a proper F3. In October, the team was 28th in goals against per game. In November, it “improved” to 25th. In December, they ranked 11th, helped by a penalty kill that was the league’s best that month, and while their goaltending solidified, it wasn’t jaw-droppingly good (12th in five-on-five save percentage). 

Lineup/Deployment Decisions

Some of Berube’s line combinations and deployment decisions are also finally following a more coherent approach.

The McMann-Matthews-Domi combination has controlled over 60% of the shot attempts and over 65% of the expected goals together, as Berube isn’t hard-matching Matthews in difficult head-to-head situations all night. Most importantly, Matthews is showing legitimate signs of life offensively. 

Before William Nylander got hurt, the Maccelli-Tavares-Nylander line controlled just under 55% of shot attempts and were winning their minutes. The Laughton-Lorentz combination is unlikely to tilt their shifts given their usage (under 27% offensive-zone starts), but they are eating minutes against top-six lines and are tied 7-7 in goals. This facilitates opportunities for the lines above them to push for offense in different matchups. Right now, the Nic Roy line is offering some offensive punch as Laughton takes on the heavy lifting. Roy has three points in his last four games.  

This is a far cry from the beginning of the season, when every breakout was an exercise in off-the-glass-and-out, Max Domi led the team in defensive-zone draws for well over a month, and there was a point when the only right-handed defenseman in the lineup was Philippe Myers. 

The Scott Laughton injury throwing the entire forward group into disarray at the start of the season will forever remain head-scratching. But it’s at least moving toward a more sensible approach now, after months of injuries and odd decisions. To Berube’s credit, once the team started returning to health and he had the option available, he began sitting underperforming veterans, who have since responded on the ice. 

The team has made some tweaks, finally cut bait on a struggling coach, and the roster/lineup is a little more logical, thanks in part to (of all things) a waiver claim. We can see a path for the Leafs to run four proper forward lines and three defense pairings (once Brandon Carlo returns; yes, he is a significant upgrade over Myers) while receiving solid goaltending. There is a reason why this team was unanimously viewed as a playoff team in the offseason. This situation isn’t like the Winnipeg Jets’, where people were way off in their thinking. There is a solid team in Toronto. 

For now, it looks like Savard was the fall guy and Berube will stay behind the bench, so he has to show some flexibility and willingness to change. To Berube’s credit, he has shown some early signs of both. This is worthy of some recognition, while also understanding that there is a lot of work to be done.

The Leafs are not even close to out of the woods, and I remain highly skeptical of their prospects if they play at a pace where they’re outplayed 55/45 at five-on-five. The zone time is starting to trend toward evening out, but there are still long stretches when it falls apart (e.g., the Detroit game). However, with good health, getting the power play in order, an elite penalty kill, the goaltending settling down, continuing to chip away at their breakouts to facilitate their forecheck/trend their five-on-five play in the right direction, and most importantly, Auston Matthews firing on all cylinders, we can start to visualize a path toward the 2025-26 Maple Leafs becoming a competitive playoff team again.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR