Five thoughts on problems Maple Leafs must address — and soon

TORONTO — With the Toronto Maple Leafs hosting and losing two games at Scotiabank Arena over the weekend, things suddenly look a lot more bleak for the blue-and-white faithful.

The problems aren’t insurmountable, they aren’t unfixable, but with six regulation wins in 16 tries, it’s becoming clear that the season ahead won’t be spent coasting to the Atlantic Division crown, but rather sorting out a viable version of themselves for a competitive playoff series.

Well, hopefully, say Leafs fans.

Let’s go to Dom Luszczyszyn from The Athletic for some mathematical context:

So, what’s going on here? Well, let’s start with the areas that have everyone’s attention.

First, you can talk about the team play, but something else is looming large.

Auston Matthews still isn’t dominant, and the fear is it ain’t coming back

Matthews still has the brilliant mind of a goal scorer — he knows where to be and when, he’s slick and sneaky, and has the great hands to deceive goaltenders at every turn. He can pick a corner when left undefended, no doubt. You don’t lead the league in goals scored since the day you came in the league without those tools. 

But I did say “slick and sneaky” rather than “dominant and inevitable” as he’s felt in years past. He no longer forces his will on defenders, and the conversation I have most often with people off-air seems to be, “What do you think is going on with Matthews?”

I don’t have an answer. Please note, though, that the debate is on “why,” and not “if,” because he’s undeniably just not the same powerful force he was en route to winning a Hart Trophy.

Some will say it’s Mitch Marner’s absence, but that’s not it. Here are his stats with and without Marner on the ice over his 10-year NHL career to date.

Matthews has been hugely productive in huge minutes without the guy in the past. So let’s shelve that, it ain’t the Marner thing.

With him being less overwhelming compared to his old self, I looked at the data according to NHL Edge. 

Auston Matthews’ hardest recorded shot, by year:

Granted, it’s early this season, but it’s not trending great.

How about Matthews’ max skating speed, by league-wide percentile:

MASSIVE CAVEAT: The stats from this season mean very little, and the idea of a one-time max speed telling us a bigger picture story is dicey enough in the first place. These stats don’t prove anything. After all, you could do nothing all year, have one everything-goes-perfect moment and hit some great high, which would cover up the rest of the year. And this year they’ve played a fraction of the games for those moments to occur, so it’s silly to put too much stock into them.

But that shot-velocity thing does check out what you see with your eyes, as his shot used to be on top of goalies before they were set. Although the numbers don’t prove anything, they sure do feel congruent with his play, don’t they?

And this one down below def checks out with the eye test too. Here’s “Percentage of his ice time spent in the O-zone” by year, based on his percentile rank in the league (99^th being tops):

Again, it’s early in the season. But he’s below a point per game, and his numbers everywhere are in decline. He tallies fewer hits, fewer takeaways, and I don’t mean just this year. It’s been a slow drip for years.

So is it injury? Off-ice habits? Some early age-related decline? Coach- or team-based? Speculate how you want. But there’s no denying he’s taken a step back physically, and the team is going to have to figure out how to win with this version of Matthews unless there’s some miraculous turnabout in the near future.

Rush chances against are an abomination

So far this season, the Leafs are 31st in “rushes against per game” (at five-on-five) and 32nd in rush goals against per game (via Sportlogiq). They give up a goal on the rush at a pace of, call it roughly one per game.

Last season, they were eighth in rush chances against, and fourth in rush goals against. (They’ve given up 15 of them this season, with just 34 all of last season.)

I’m being hard on him here today, maybe, but he’s the captain, so … every game, I see some version of this: You’ve got two forwards in the pile, digging, and the third forward standing behind the net, where Matthews is. Junior hockey stuff.

Like, if they win the battle, maybe he’s got some space. If they lose it, he’s dead trapped behind the net as the rush goes the other way. He should roughly be up in the slot, above the pile on the strong side, reading if he needs to jump down, not starting down and reading if he needs to jump up.

It’s over and again with this group — they’re on the wrong side of battles, hoping one pops free for them to go have a rush. Instead, they’re allowing them against at an alarming rate.

Former captain John Tavares was right — it is an immature way to play.

Goaltending is a problem, but not one they should do anything about yet

I hear people talking about Anthony Stolarz’s slow start and blaming the one time he came out and (rightfully!) called out the defence of their group for part of his struggles, and maybe that didn’t help. OK, definitely not. But the problem with that excuse is that he was playing poorly before that too.

I think his frequency of use and the environment the team has put him in have combined to make for a brutal start for an otherwise very good goaltender. Joseph Woll’s situation obviously put a lot of additional pressure on the guy, and so fans are hoping his return alleviates that.

I don’t think the Leafs need to do anything other than get Woll back, start alternating games, and play better defence for these poor guys. The goaltending has been bad, but the goaltenders aren’t legitimately bad, which should imply some better days ahead in the crease.

Tavares, Nylander have never been better — take that for what it’s worth

What’s funny is that this is a clear positive, but the negative shade on it is that the team looks this bad while Tavares looks like he’s in his prime and William Nylander looks like a legit threat for the Art Ross Trophy. Ol’ No. 88 controls every shift, and the aforementioned Tavares is tied for 10^th in league scoring too.

Tavares is tops amongst Leafs forwards in expected goals percentage (teasing out the somewhat minutes-protected Easton Cowan), and has been their best defensive forward by “goals against per 60.” These guys have been terrific, and Matthew Knies has been great too.

I don’t think you can expect that level of play to keep up (maybe from Nylander), and so they’ll need to find more from this forward group if those guys slow down.

Right now the bottom six is pretty purposeless, a problem that’s plagued them for years. All the line shuffling probably hasn’t helped that, but coach Craig Berube seems desperate to find something, anything that works from a group that isn’t light on talent, just purpose. 

Dare I say they miss David Kampf, a player they cut out for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, who was a defensively reliable bottom-six player.

Myers and Benoit are a real problem

Simon Benoit’s story was that he was a fringe D-man who knew it and so he played his heart out, made safe and reliable choices, and brought physicality to their back-end. As he’s gotten more comfortable with his roster spot, he’s gotten away from his game, and now runs around way too much. I admire that he wants to be impactful, but they need more low event players right now.

Phillippe Myers has been just about as disappointing as anyone this season. Last season, it felt like he was a good NHL D blocked for ice time by a solid D-corps. In his minutes this season, he’s last in goals against per 60, and he’s playing the softest competition. They can’t protect him more than they have, and he hasn’t lived up to his end of the bargain.

Frankly, on the back-end, I’ve liked:

* Jake McCabe

* Oliver Ekman-Larsson

There’s too many good pros back there for the list to be this short. They certain do, and will, miss Chris Tanev.

With all this stuff, we’re left a little in the dark on the outside with the “whys” of it all. I can’t identify a systems change, and nor would you expect one, as Berube was the man in charge last year, and this year, and so that part all looks the same. The head coach dictates a crucial decision like that.

What they seem to be missing is buy-in from the players to be in the right places. They seem caught in the middle, a team with some talent that’s being asked to play in straight lines with dump-ins, sometimes willing to do it, other times not. Plays aren’t made consistently, if at all, but they don’t make the easy play reliably enough for them to count on one another either. 

In all, it results in them never having the puck. Either the coach or the roster needs to move toward the other on that.

As of today, their roster is still in major flux. There are some injuries, but also no clear line hierarchy. The Matthews group has been loaded up, but on any given day, what comes behind them could come in any order, you never really know, and that can be hard as a player. But having nothing that works is hard on a coach too.

And so this will all come down to coaching and leadership. Matthews’ physical decline aside, he’s still an effective player, and they have more than enough talent to win more than they lose. But can they buy in, can they get on the same page, can they work together to a degree where they become hard to play? Can they commit to helping out on both sides of the puck, so they can make life easier on their strained goaltenders? Can they build toward something that’s frustrating to battle in a playoff series?

The Leafs entered the season with a lot of questions. Somehow, a month into the year, they’ve answered few yet found many more.