Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Keep Hyman Right Where he Is

Toronto Maple Leafs forward Zach Hyman is crazy underrated.

Editor in Leaf contributor Cary Byron isn’t a fan, and he is entitled to his opinion. I, however, happen to hold the opposite opinion, and in the spirit of Devil’s Advocation, not to mention helping to change Cary’s mind, here is my defense of Zach Hyman and the way he is deployed by the Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock:

First, a theory: Loading up three players on a ‘super line’ doesn’t make the line better. There is only one puck. Each player can have only so many touches. I call this the Law of Diminishing Returns, and applied to hockey it means this: Adding a third star player to a line won’t make it better and it is therefore better to have a balanced skill-set on each line, leading to better balance throughout the lineup.

For example, forget Hyman for a second. Cary – and others – suggest giving Hyman’s job to the more skilled Kapanen. Sure, Kapanen will bring more talent to the line, but in his role as the fourth line right-winger, he is a weapon that the Leafs can use to exploit other teams. Most other teams (probably about 29 of them) don’t have anyone close to as talented and explosive as Kapanen on their fourth line. The reason being that they can’t afford to keep that level of skill of their first three lines.

Zach Hyman on the First Line is a Good Thing

The Toronto Maple Leafs, however, are so deep at forward (they have first-line skilled players on every line) that they can afford to put a player like Kapanen on the fourth line, which is going to play havoc with other team’s ability to line-match and play defense against them.

As far as Hyman goes, putting him on the fourth line gives you one super-skilled line and another grinder line. There is no balance, it’s much easier to defend and whatever Hyman specifically was adding to the first line is now gone. The Leafs are easier to defend and we’re back to using the extremely outdated “top six/ bottom six philosophy” which left town with Dave Nonis.

Hyman’s individual scoring totals are irrelevant. Since he plays nearly all his minutes with Nylander and Matthews – often against the toughest possible competition – we have to think about those guys as a group. As a group, we know they’re successful.

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During the regular season, Matthews was a 51.2% possession player. When on the ice with Hyman, he moves to 52.1% – that might not look like much, but consider how small the range of Corsi is and it’s actually pretty huge.

Nylander has an overall possession rating of 52.4% but when he gets on the ice with Hyman, he jumps to an astounding 55.6%.

This suggests that Hyman’s crash and bang game is key to making room for his more skilled linemates. Some might scoff at his point totals, but he’s not there to score points. He’s there so Matthews and Nylander can score.

Add in Kapanen in place of Hyman and your two best players now have the puck far less. Sure, Kapanen will outscore Hyman, but the opportunity cost is that Matthews and Nylander will almost certainly also score less.

If It Ain’t Broke

One thing worth pointing out: Zach Hyman’s individual shooting percentage is 4.48%. This means that he’s either been extremely unlucky, or that he’s one of the worst shooting players in NHL history. Even bad players are going to eventually be between 7-9% . We can almost guarantee that his shooting percentage will double next year, meaning he’ll score something closer to 12 5v5 goals, as opposed to six.

At the end of the day, the guy Hyman played almost a 1000 5v5 minutes with led the NHL in 5v5 goal scoring as a rookie. His team is standing tall against the best the NHL has to offer and as is almost always the case, if you don’t score and you don’t fight, you get extremely underrated. As the old saying goes, if it ain’t broke……

Zach Hyman deserves his spot on Auston Matthews wing. He frankly deserves at least a couple Calder votes. Eventually Kapanen is going to have to rise up the lineup. When that happens, you’ll see Bozak moved and Nylander put at centre. But until then, leave well enough alone.

all stats from stats.hockey.analysis

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