Toronto Maple Leafs: Fresh Faces Needed For Penalty Kill

The Toronto Maple Leafs won’t be improving too much in the grand scheme of things next year, but who they send out on the penalty kill is one area that needs some cleaning up.

Last year the Toronto Maple Leafs penalty killers did a great job of getting destroyed in their own end. Sure, it’s the penalty kill and the expectation is for the other team to generate chances – but a few of the Leafs were especially horrible.

The main group of PKers (minimum 100 TOI) featured six players and, to what should be no one’s surprise, Daniel Winnik led the way with the lowest FA60 (fenwick against per 60).

Here’s a look at those six Toronto Maple Leafs players with consistent top defensive players Jonathan Toews, Drew Doughty and Patrice Bergeron added for effect. The average of all league players (min 100 TOI) is also there just for fun.

*all stats from war-on-ice.com

Peter Holland and Dion Phaneuf’s numbers are disgusting – 10th & 11th highest FA60 for players with a 100 TOI minimum in 2014-2015. Leo Komarov has a good number close to the average and Roman Polak would do in a pinch. Daniel Winnik is the best forward of the bunch. Stephane Robidas is the best defender of the bunch.

If we extend the search to minimum 45 TOI, it adds three more Toronto Maple Leafs players that are still with the team.

Morgan Rielly’s numbers suggest that, maybe, he should play a little bit more. The risk of his FA60 increasing as the sample size grows is there, but the alternative of sending out other players who we know aren’t going to get the job done isn’t really appealing.

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Absent from both lists is Nazem Kadri – the Toronto Maple Leafs best possession player. He had nearly 12 minutes of TOI shorthanded. That absolutely needs to change. His FA60 is likely to increase from the 55.85 in those 12 minutes, but will it get as bad as Tyler Bozak’s 85+ or James van Riemsdyk’s 96+? I doubt it.

Morgan Rielly needs an increased look on the penalty kill. Great defenders play all situations and Rielly has potential to be a great defender for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Nothing Kadri has done in his career says he should be kept away from the man-down situation.

James van Riemsdyk is the worst possession player the Toronto Maple Leafs have and he saw nearly four times the amount of TOI as Nazem Kadri. That’s simply unacceptable.

The crews that patrolled the ice shorthanded need to be tweaked. That’s a simple personnel change that needs no strenuous effort. Having both the 10th and 11th worst FA60 players shorthanded playing big minutes a man down can’t continue to happen.

The Minnesota Wild had the best penalty kill during the 2014-2015 season and of the 11 players that saw over 38 TOI with a man down only two of them were over 70FA60. Only one of them was above the league average in the charts – and that was a 78.40FA60 rating.

The penalty kill is an in-house issue that can be made better rather easily.

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