The Friday Four is a collection of thoughts and information on some intriguing player storylines from around the NHL. On deck this week is:
• Rielly’s contract could age poorly
• Pens the perfect spot for Gibson
• Change of scenery working out well for Kakko
• NHL debut was worth the wait for Frank
Morgan Rielly, Toronto Maple Leafs
There were a number of question marks heading into this season surrounding how the top players of the Toronto Maple Leafs would adjust to Craig Berube’s simple, straightforward coaching style. For the most part, though, they’ve adapted well. Mitch Marner is on pace for a career-best 111 points, John Tavares is having an offensive renaissance at age 34, William Nylander, even with a recent slump, is in the midst of another productive season and Auston Matthews is starting to find his groove again.
One notable exception has been Morgan Rielly. The Leafs blueliner hasn’t looked anything like himself this season and is really struggling to find his footing. Normally a catalyst for creating offence from the back end, Rielly has just one goal in 32 games and only two points in his past 13. He’s on pace for 35 points, which is a far cry from the 58 he put up in 2023-24, and that was even with missing 10 games.
That’s nowhere near enough from an offence-first defenseman making $7.5 million per season until 2030 and the Leafs have really missed his production. Toronto is tied for third worst in the NHL when it comes to points from its defence corps and dead last in goals with 10, via Sportsnet Stats. Only Nashville and Anaheim have fewer points.
Rielly has been masquerading as a No. 1 blueliner for some time out of necessity, as the Leafs have regularly had makeshift defence corps over the past decade that often needed to be overhauled at the trade deadline, just to make them serviceable come playoff time. He was the best of a typically mediocre bunch and did a lot of things well, but couldn’t be trusted to play in all situations, kill penalties or defend a lead.
Now that the Leafs have rebuilt their unit with Chris Tanev and Jake McCabe developing into a great shutdown pair, as well as the key addition of veteran Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Rielly’s shortcomings are more glaring and his ice time is suffering. He’s still playing 21:24 a night, but that’s down more than two minutes from what he played a season ago. Berube isn’t leaning on Rielly as much as Sheldon Keefe did because he has the luxury of trusting Tanev and McCabe against just about anybody.
Part of the issue is also Toronto’s stale power play, which is, quite frankly, hard to watch at times. It’s looked more dangerous with Rielly off it and a five-forward setup. Rielly has been a staple on the top unit for years and the Leafs even tried Ekman-Larsson in his role earlier this season in hopes of igniting the man advantage. The Leafs’ rumoured interest in John Klingberg, who is 32, coming off major hip surgery and had a failed experiment with the team last year, should tell you all you need to know about Toronto’s confidence in Rielly righting the ship on the power play.
Berube’s coaching style isn’t doing Rielly any favours either. One of Rielly’s best traits is joining the offence and attacking off the rush, something the Leafs are no longer doing as frequently under Berube. Toronto is dumping the puck in more often, trying to win puck battles below the goal line to generate offence that way. According to Sportsnet Stats, the Leafs are dumping it in on 52.2 per cent of their zone entries (fifth in the NHL) and are averaging nearly 43 dump-ins per game (seventh in the NHL). Rielly is an incredible skater and, in fairness to him, with less emphasis on attacking off the rush, one of his best skills is regularly being neutralized.
The other major concern for the Maple Leafs when it comes to Rielly has to be the ongoing saga of finding him a partner. Tanev was supposed to finally be the long-term answer, but that quickly fizzled because Rielly can’t play all the important defensive minutes that Tanev needs to. Now Toronto may have to once again go searching for a Rielly partner before the deadline, something that’s become all too common. In the past three years, the Leafs have traded for Luke Schenn and Ilya Lyubushkin twice to partner with Rielly, using up precious draft capital and cap space in the process.
In his 12 seasons with the Leafs, only Ron Hainsey and Schenn were really good fits for Rielly, and Schenn’s was a small sample size. It’s not an easy job playing with Rielly, as he likes to roam, and defending in his own zone isn’t his strong suit. You have to be positionally sound to compensate and able to handle being put in some tough spots. Ideally, your $7.5-million defenceman should be elevating and carrying lesser partners, not forcing you to spend assets every spring to balance out your blueline.
The Leafs have other major needs, most notably a third-line centre, with only so much trade capital and cap space available. Coming into the season, the hope was the forward position would be their main focus if they were to make a deal, with maybe a depth defenceman as well, but now it looks like finding the right piece to play with Rielly is again going to be critical.
With all this said, it wouldn’t be fair to Rielly to skip over all the good he brings to the team. For a franchise that has redefined playoff disappointment over the past decade, Rielly has been one of the few to step up and elevate his play in big moments and games. He was particularly good two post-seasons ago when this core won its only playoff series, posting 12 points in 11 games, and is often the emotional leader for the group. Some even made an argument that Rielly deserved the captaincy when it went to John Tavares.
There is plenty of value to what Rielly brings, but he’ll soon be 31 and he desperately needs to rediscover what he does best. Not everyone in the NHL is a complete player and Rielly will never be a shutdown, dominant defensive force on this team, and he doesn’t have to be with Tanev and McCabe in the fold. He just has to help drive and generate offence for a team that isn’t producing nearly as much of it as it did last year.
Toronto now has a quartet of defencemen, including Rielly, north of 30 years old signed for multiple years at significant cap hits. The odds of all of those aging well are a virtual impossibility, and if what we’ve seen from Rielly this season is a sign of things to come, his contract could be the worst of the bunch.
If Rielly isn’t clicking at a 55-60-point pace, he becomes very ordinary and just another guy.
It wasn’t exactly surprising to see Tristan Jarry land on waivers Wednesday.
The Pittsburgh Penguins netminder has had a disastrous season, sitting at an .886 save percentage and appearing no closer to finding his game. Pittsburgh is embroiled in a tight Eastern Conference playoff race and couldn’t afford to squander points any longer due to shaky goaltending. That leaves Alex Nedeljkovic and Joel Blomqvist to carry the load, which isn’t an ideal tandem when you’re desperate to make the playoffs in order to maximize every Sidney Crosby season you have left.
That’s why the stars could align for the Pens to acquire someone like John Gibson to stabilize the crease. Gibson has seemingly been on the block for a few years but a deal has never materialized, partly because of his play, his health and his contract. The 31-year-old has not performed well in recent years, though at least a portion of that could be blamed on the Anaheim Ducks simply not being very good. Gibson and other Ducks netminders are routinely under siege behind a weak defensive team.
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This season, Gibson has looked a little more capable, though. He’s sporting a .908 save percentage and a .500 record. Not incredible numbers by any means, but much better than Gibson has shown over the past few campaigns. Health has again been challenging for Gibson, but that’s probably to be expected with most goalies in their thirties. Pittsburgh doesn’t have many options and it may just have to take the risk.
The other roadblock is Gibson’s contract, which now has only two more years left after this one at $6.4 million. It’s a little more palatable at this point without as much term remaining and is probably better than Jarry’s. The challenge for the Pens is making it fit. It’s going to be tough for GM Kyle Dubas to get Jarry’s deal off the books, though not impossible. He was willing to give up assets in the past to rid himself of anchor contracts when it came to Patrick Marleau and Petr Mrazek, but that is going to be costly to the Penguins’ future. It would certainly take at least a first-round pick for someone to take Jarry’s deal, something Pittsburgh can’t really afford to lose right now.
One thing that may be pulling Gibson toward the Pens is that he’s from Pittsburgh and would no doubt love to play for his hometown team. It’s been a long time since Gibson has tasted playoff hockey, or even played meaningful games, for that matter, and to get a chance to go on a run with Crosby and company must be really tempting.
Any Gibson deal will be complicated, but joining the Pens would make a lot of sense for both sides, and Pittsburgh’s playoff hopes just might hinge on it.
The Pacific Northwest has been very good to Kaapo Kakko.
A 2019 second-overall pick, Kakko never really clicked with the New York Rangers but is finding much more success with the Seattle Kraken. The 23-year-old has nine points in his past nine games and is enjoying top-line deployment, averaging three more minutes per night than he did with the Rangers.
What’s interesting about Kakko’s early success with Seattle is that the Kraken don’t have anywhere as potent a lineup as New York does. Kakko is skating with Matty Beniers and Jaden Schwartz, and that line is a good representation of what Seattle’s roster looks like. A bunch of talented young players with potential mixed with a handful of veterans who aren’t elite. The team is 22nd in goals for and no one player is specifically propping up Kakko’s numbers.
Instead, Kakko is likely benefiting from the extra ice time and opportunity as well as perhaps a lot less pressure being on his shoulders. It’s not easy playing in a city like New York under a microscope, especially for a highly touted top-five draft pick. Kakko also went straight to the NHL after being drafted when he probably would’ve been better served developing somewhere.
Kakko still has a long way to go to prove he can be a top-six player, but it goes to show that players develop at different paces and in different situations. Take Alexis Lafreniere from Kakko’s old team, for example, who came off a great 2023-24 and an even more impressive post-season. Lafreniere had 28 goals and nearly 60 points and scored eight more goals in the playoffs, leading many to believe 2024-25 would be a major breakout campaign. The Rangers forward is instead struggling, being held off the scoresheet in 14 of his past 18 games and barely on pace for 46 points.
There is no reason to panic about either Kakko or Lafreniere. The reality is, very few players are polished products before the age of 25 and even fewer avoid significant ups and downs. Kakko is starting to show real signs of promise and whether he turns into an impact NHLer or not, it was definitely still a little risky for the Rangers to give up on him so soon. It remains to be seen if they’ll regret it.
Ethen Frank, Washington Capitals
Good things come to those who wait.
That’s certainly been true for Ethen Frank, who couldn’t have scripted his first week in the NHL any better. The Capitals forward, who will turn 27 next month, finally got his chance last Friday and made the most of it, notching an assist in his debut. He followed that up with goals in back-to-back games, including a beautiful finish on a two-on-one against the Anaheim Ducks.
Frank has had quite a journey to the NHL. He was never drafted and spent five years at the University of Western Michigan, before ultimately landing with the Hershey Bears. Frank has scored 79 goals with Hershey over the past three seasons, earning himself a call-up with the big club, something he still finds hard to believe.
“I still remember staring at the Fathead of Ovechkin on my wall as a kid in Nebraska,” Frank told Tarik El-Bashir after Tuesday’s game. “So it’s pretty surreal to be here.”
It remains to be seen how long Frank will stay with the Capitals but he’s certainly giving Washington every reason to keep him. When you’ve waited as long as Frank has to get to the NHL, you have to make the most of your opportunity.
