MLHS’ Anthony Petrielli joined Sportsnet 590 to discuss the Maple Leafs’ three-game winning streak, the ripple effects of Easton Cowan’s emergence and Jack Roslovic’s strong start, Nick Paul’s fit at second-line center, Gavin McKenna’s linemates, and the concerns on defense and in goal ahead of the matchup with Edmonton.
Petrielli on Jack Roslovic and Easton Cowan allowing the Leafs to spread out their top forwards:
What Roslovic’s doing right now is incredible. As long as he’s rolling, this is great. And with Cowan’s rapid improvement, their two best wingers aren’t even playing with Matthews right now, and it’s not even a concern.
Last season, Matthews didn’t look good. If their two best wingers weren’t playing with him, it would be a huge story. But Cowan is playing so well, and Roslovic’s playing so well, and he clearly has some longtime chemistry with Matthews. Matthews himself is also playing incredibly well. To be clear, he’s by far the best player on that line.
It just makes their life so much easier. Tavares gets hurt, and you have Kirill Marchenko and William Nylander as your second-line wingers. No one’s even talking about the fact that Nick Paul is playing 2C. He had 15 points last season, and it doesn’t matter because, 1) he’s playing well—he’s obviously healthy—and 2) your wingers are so good on the second line that you could put a lot of guys there at center, and it would be completely fine.
It could be just biding time. Let’s be realistic about it: probably they are buying some time. But this is great for the time being. Ride it as long as you can.
Petrielli on Gavin McKenna’s line with Colton Sissons and Vinni Lettieri:
It’s not a good line conceptually. It’s not a good line in reality. It’s obviously not the way you’d want to draw it up.
They’re in a bit of a tough spot, just given who’s currently available to them health-wise and the way that everyone else is rolling. It’s hard to look at the way that the first and the second and the fourth line are playing and say, “Well, let’s just split…”
The domino effect is you’d probably have to change at least two of those lines to facilitate creating a third line that could be more effective, and that’s a hard thing to justify when everyone else is kind of rolling.
If you look at the way those other three lines performed last night, all of them were good. Basically, anything the Rangers had in terms of possession and having the puck and making plays was essentially just given back strictly through that Sissons line last night. They were out-attempted 11-1. It was pretty drastic.
Now the issue is they’re going on the road. Mike Babcock, in particular, will be licking his chops if that’s the third line.
McDavid and Draisaitl had five points each last game, and McDavid’s at 31 in 10. Then you’re going to go to Edmonton, where they have last change and they’re controlling the matchup.
The sad part is they probably do have to move things around a little bit now that they’re going on the road. As much as I just said, it’s unfortunate. At home, you could do it, but now that they’re going on the road, they will likely have to sit there and say, “We can’t run this.”
Petrielli on whether Nick Paul can sustain his play at second-line center:
I think there are so many really good winger combinations that the Leafs have that it’s reasonably sustainable. They’re not asking him to go out there and be a 50-point guy. He knows that, and he plays to his role really well.
How many years have we talked about, “These guys don’t know their role, what they’re supposed to do out there”? Certain guys are scorers, and everyone wants that role and to be that guy. And there are certain guys who need to go to the net and forecheck and be strong defensively.
Paul does know that’s his role, and he does it well. He’s been a top-six forward for a couple of years, at least, with Tampa. He popped 20-plus goals a couple of times there, and the other two years were around 17 and 18. Generally, that’s top-six forward production—on the low end, but it’s there.
He knows all he has to do is go to the net, let Nylander and Marchenko have the puck and make plays, and just create space, work down low, win pucks for them, and be strong defensively. If that’s all it is for him, he can do that on a consistent basis as long as he stays healthy.
Right now, it’s Marchenko and Nylander, but it could be Cowan and Nylander. You can go up and down the lineup. They had Tavares on his wing prior to the injury. There are so many good wingers on the team that I don’t think it’s a tall task.
I think he’s capable of doing it, and he’ll just play to exactly what his strengths are. There might be points where we lament, as the season goes along, and say, “Well, this is a 35-, 40-point guy as your 2C.” But as far as the overall result, I think it’s possible for it to work very well for the team. So far, it has.
Petrielli on where John Tavares could fit when he returns:
They gave a one-to-six-week timeline on the Tavares injury, which usually means probably closer to six than one week. It’s a pretty wide range.
Just based off the knee—and I don’t speculate too much on it–and where it got contacted, it’s probably a decent chunk of time. Who knows who’s rolling and not by then, right? Maybe Easton Cowan cools off, or Nick Paul fades in this 2C spot, or something to that effect.
But if they’re clicking, I think it’s a good problem to have. Just put Tavares with McKenna, which I think they’ve shown some chemistry, and he’s a good stabilizer for him.
It’s possible Dakota Joshua factors into the equation by the time Tavares is [back]. I know everyone’s kind of forgotten about him, but he’s playing with the Marlies right now on a conditioning stint. You could feasibly run McKenna–Tavares–Joshua, for example, as a third line. Joshua brings some size and goes to the net and is reasonable defensively and on the wall.
That lets them put together the Sissons–Blueger fourth line that played a lot together against the Rangers once they had the lead. I’m sure not everyone’s going to want to hear that right now, given the game Zack MacEwen just had.
Petrielli on Zack MacEwen’s performance against the Rangers:
There was a point in the third, pretty early on, when obviously they had the lead, and they basically just went down to three lines, and he wasn’t part of it. Truthfully, I felt for him because he was playing really well. At that point, there was no reason to reduce his minutes.
But you can understand why they like the line there with Sissons more, from a defensive standpoint. If you’re pushing it to three lines, he’s the logical choice. But probably a little bit unfairly, his ice time was reduced because he was fantastic. He was flying. The clapper off the rush was full marks.
Petrielli on whether the Leafs can become reliable when protecting leads:
Probably not if Tanev’s not healthy, no. Without Tanev, it’s hard to envision. With Tanev, it’s possible because he’s that good, especially defensively. You can roll him out with McCabe, and then you can kind of piece together from there.
Hey, Raddysh isn’t producing right now, but he’s logging heavy minutes for them. He’s stabilizing their defense right now. He played over 24 minutes agains the Rangers. It was nearly 27 against San Jose. It was a little bit less in between, but he’s playing big minutes.
It’s hard to look at it, though, without Tanev and say, “These guys will just be able to shut the game down entirely.” Probably not.
Petrielli on the Leafs’ goaltending and the potential for improvement:
Realistically, it just hasn’t been good enough, but the good thing is that the team can score.
To the previous question: Can you imagine the Leafs shutting it down? No. But can I also imagine a bunch of teams shutting the Leafs down? Also no. Their forwards are that good, but it’s going to be probably fire-wagon hockey.
Bring it on, right? It’s fun. I don’t know how sustainable it is for playoff success, but they finished fifth last year. Making the playoffs and being just a strong, competitive team is a reasonable bar for the group this year. They’re trying to build back up. Last year was a complete shambles.
The goaltending is probably the one thing that you can look at so far and say, “That might actually bounce back the other way and be a lot better than it’s been.” Because so far, it’s been a bit of a slog.
If we look at certain goals—yes, Zibanejad tips one in front, and that’s a tricky save. But you look at the third goal, prior to it happening, the sequence was a shot along the ice from the top of the circle that Bob spits out as a big rebound instead of swallowing it up, and then the Rangers continue the possession and score. That wasn’t a good rebound. It shouldn’t have happened. The play should have been over, and it wasn’t.
Stolarz was good against Columbus, I thought. As that game went along, he was solid. He let in the first shot, but then after that, he was good.
And Bob was good against San Jose. He was far better than he should have needed to be against San Jose, who, in fairness, also just beat Montreal and Ottawa. Thank you to the Sharks, as an aside. Bob was really good in that game.
The goaltending’s just been up and down, but I do view it as one thing with the team where you can reasonably think, “This actually probably can regress for the better.”
Petrielli on the matchup with Edmonton on Saturday:
Honestly, I think it’s going to be a fun one. I don’t know how much of a litmus test it is in terms of where the Leafs are as a team in the league anymore. It’s a bit strange because they’re going into that game, and I’m actually expecting Edmonton to be the team that’s more structured and plays 200-foot hockey under Babcock. I’m expecting the Leafs to be a little bit more fire-wagony and loose offensively.
That feels a bit weird because it’s usually been the reverse of that. Even going back to when Babcock was the coach of the Leafs, as everyone will remember, Matthews’ minutes were 19, 18 minutes a game, and it was a big story back then, while McDavid was playing 20-plus/huge minutes a night. I remember Babcock being asked about it while coaching the Leafs, and he kind of just laughed, like, “Well, that’s how they play. This is how we play.”
The Leafs, under Sheldon Keefe, were a bit more of the structured, cleaner team through the neutral zone, and now it’s probably flipped the other way. It’s a bit funny to look at it in that sense.
I hope it’s a good game. But to everything we talked about, the Leafs could go up 3–0 in the first period, and I think everyone would say, “Well, this isn’t safe.”
