TORONTO — The past month of watching the Toronto Maple Leafs has been less of a roller-coaster and more of a “Tower of Terror”-style free fall. They were bad enough heading into Christmas that they fired a coach, which was the start of the ascension on the ride. And up, up it went (against non-playoff teams), so high that you could see the landscape of the whole league after a 7-0-2 run.
There, peering out with a hand shielding their eyes from the sun, you started to hear the beginnings of real hope. “Boy, nobody’s very good out there, are they, maybe we could do something here?”
The elevator hung dangling out over the edge, until, with a sudden woosh, the bottom dropped clean out.
And now, fans can feel their stomachs in their throats.
The last time the Leafs went winless over a five-game homestand was over 40 years ago, spanning from Dec. 29, 1984, to Jan. 9, 1985. This time around, they were outscored 25-12 in the process, clearly showing they aren’t built to hang with legitimate playoff teams, and have established themselves as the worst defensive team in the NHL.
Earlier Wednesday, Mike Kelly of Sportlogiq tweeted out rankings in each of these defensive categories:
I believe coaches refer to bad defence as an issue of “will, not skill,” but there’s a good case to be made it’s both here. The Leafs are well out-talented on the back end and the play is uninspired.
Quite the combo.
Waking up today, back at the bottom, they step off that ride onto a totally different landscape.
The public conversation around the Leafs flipped hard from, “Could they mount a rally, add a small piece or two, and still make playoffs,” to “They’re eight points back with 29 games to go, they have to sell now, how should they retool?”
The debate is over, at least externally.
Hopefully, internally, too.
Most models have their playoff chances at somewhere between five and 18 per cent, but that doesn’t even matter. Fans have eyes, and they know that even if this team went on some insane run of luck from here until mid-April and clawed into a playoff spot, I’m not sure the right to get publicly flogged by the Tampa Bay Lightning is some great prize, particularly when it comes with walking a bunch of pending UFAs out the door.
Fans would be no more hopeful next season than they are right now.
The team has to pivot, and that’s going to be in the form of a “retool” rather than a “rebuild” (as GMs around the league are apparently heavy into semantics); as in the Leafs’ case, they just have too many good players to go full punt. Getting difference-makers is almost impossible, and so while you have Auston Matthews and William Nylander under 30 years old, and Matthew Knies at 23, you’re going to want to try to reload and go again in some way.
As I often do with good players (talking now about the above three), allow me to beat back the “You can’t win with that guy” trope — whether it’s Phil Kessel or Nazem Kadri or, heck, Alex Ovechkin back in the day — that lazy expression is only true of talented players until they do win, and these are uniquely skilled guys. People used to say it about Steve Yzerman, for god’s sake. Like the others, they need the right situation, which is what you’ve got to set out to provide.
Some bigger conversations — like the future of the aforementioned captain Matthews — exist on the backburner, because if the team is no good next year, you might be looking at a Quinn Hughes situation, where he lets them know he’s not sticking around for a full rebuild. And, so, you need to find a way to recoup assets from this season’s group so you have something to spend on improving the team, and improving it quick.
With these retools, people have been pointing to Boston’s quick turnaround, though I’m not sure Leafs GM Brad Treliving can bring that example to his bosses, considering it was the Leafs who handed them Fraser Minten and a first-rounder. But, still, they recognized they have David Pastrnak and Charlie McAvoy and a good goalie in Jeremy Swayman, and so they set about filling in around those guys, much as the Leafs will with their good players (the Leafs also have good goalies who’ve just had weird years).
The Washington Capitals had some success in the short-term with a “retool,” (though it’s not holding up well in ensuing seasons), this year’s Islanders made a hard pivot … the point is, this is not impossible, but it is hard.
I’ll have plenty of time to write about what they should do with specific players over the next five weeks (leading up until March 6 trade deadline), which for me involves taking calls on Bobby McMann and Oliver Ekman-Larsson, as much as they’re two of the team’s more useful players. Those guys could garner quality returns, and then there’s a few names where the return is less important, but you just need to move on from a roster-fit perspective. I’ve got Max Domi and Matias Maccelli on that list, and if you want to think bigger, I’m here to have the Morgan Rielly conversation too.
But to go back to the phrase, “It’s not impossible, but it is hard,” I think you have to stop and spend a second there. Because it really is hard, you have to have the conversations about the GM and the coach, and to try to assess how much you trust that GM to conduct the hard pivot, and the coach to lead it.
I can’t say the state of the Calgary Flames doesn’t affect the way in which people are looking at Treliving’s ability to get this thing headed in a fresh direction. I can’t say the manner in which the management chose to replace Mitch Marner — with Maccelli, Dakota Joshua and Nick Roy — doesn’t also affect the way people feel about it.
There are certainly things Treliving could point to, in his defence. The Leafs won the Atlantic last year with 108 points, and this year they’ve been missing their best D (Chris Tanev) and a lot of Nylander, and even Matthews, at times. Their goaltending hasn’t been as good.
But many also see last year as partly a percentages-driven fluke (they were top-five in both save percentage and shooting percentage), given the underlying numbers weren’t very good then either. It just seems like they never have the puck, and that was true last year as well. Every night now, it feels like they’re undertalented and unstructured.
As for coach Craig Berube, well, just look at those defensive stats above. A coach’s impact is most clearly felt in a few places, and to me that’s with defensive structure and special teams, as well as ice-time allocation. I’m not sure there’s any of these where the staff comes off well, aside from the PK. At five-on-five, the system never felt like it fit the roster, but more damning than that is that the players haven’t bought in, not a lick. Every video session has to be just F3 diving in, leaving rushes heading the other way.
If Berube likes hard, defensive-minded players, why can’t Scott Laughton get ice time? He’s playing two minutes less per game than he did in Philadelphia. Why can’t Roy play as much as he did for Vegas?
It feels like just about all their forwards save for two or three have, at every turn, prioritized pushing up for offence and points rather than staying in structure. Part of that is the stripping of defensive personnel, in the likes of Pontus Holmberg and David Kampf and Marner, but you see offensively talented guys commit to defence on great teams all around the league, and the Leafs simply haven’t done that.
