Toronto Maple Leafs: 3 Simple Ways to Get Better
By James Tanner
The Toronto Maple Leafs are an excellent team who are weak defensively. There are three easy ways to fix this.
The weakness of the Toronto Maple Leafs is defense. Not just their blue-line, but team defense. This can easily be addressed. We’ve talked trade for months, and eventually one will happen. But in the meantime, here is how the Leafs could improve their team defense without going outside the organization.
Bring up Miro Aaltonen to centre the fourth line.
Dominic Moore is OK. He’s not that fast, he’s got almost no offensive game and he’s old. At best, he’s not costing you anything. A player like Aaltonen would be a huge upgrade, not only over Moore, but over what most teams are playing at the 4C position.
Aaltonen is faster than Moore and he’s got way more offensive game. He’ll add a scoring dimension not currently visible from this position. He seemed to have won the job in camp but was usurped because Babcock favors veterans and the optics of signing and then cutting Moore aren’t great.
Now that it’s clear the Leafs are contenders, I think this long overdue move needs to be made immediately.
2. Make Either Nylander or Marner a Centre
Tyler Bozak has almost zero defensive awareness. If you trade him, you can put either Nylander or Marner at centre, and suddenly you have room on the roster for Kasperi Kapanen.
With Kapanen aboard, the Leafs are faster and much better defensively. With Hyman on one line, Komarov, Brown and Kapanen on the others, each of the Toronto Maple Leafs four lines would have a quality defensive player on it.
The addition of Kapanen is essential to improving this team. He’s their fastest skater and he’s among their best defensive players. Getting rid of Bozak and replacing him with Kapanen is a huge defensive upgrade.
Marner on the fourth line is objectively stupid. You can play him in Bozak’s spot or put him on a line with Matthews. Either way is fine by me. Some are hesitant to break up the Matthews/Nylander pairing, but they’re both so good I don’t think you lose anything by separating them.
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My first choice is to make Nylander a centre, but if it’s that big a deal to break him and Matthews up, then put Marner there. Either way, both players are huge upgrades over Bozak and Kapanen now fits into the lineup.
3. Give Auston Matthews More Ice Time
Through eight games this season, Auston Matthews is averaging 17:52 in ice time, per game (all strengths). That is only about 20 seconds more per game than he was averaging in his rookie season. This is good for 46th among centres in the NHL.
If the Leafs play Matthews more, they’ll have the puck more. He may not be known (yet) for his great defense, but Matthews is a puck-possession monster and it’s very difficult for teams to score when they don’t have the puck.
Almost every other player of comparable skill plays more than Matthews and Babcock needs to follow suit. The fact is, the Leafs are almost untouchable when he is out there, and so he needs to be out there more.
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Conclusion
The Toronto Maple Leafs are already a good team. If they were to bring up Aaltonen and Kapanen, get rid of Bozak, and play Matthews more, they’d probably be great. Certainly all these moves would significantly improve their overall team defense, which is their current (possibly only) weakness.
Thanks for reading.