Toronto Maple Leafs: Keep Bozak, JVR and Roll 4 Lines

The Toronto Maple Leafs have too many players.  They have several prominent pending UFAs.  A weakness on the blue-line, and not much cap space.  So a trade looks likely.

But what if that isn’t the plan at all?

James van Riemsdyk was, if you go by game-score (and why wouldn’t you?) the Toronto Maple Leafs best 5v5 player last season.  Tyler Bozak would be the NHL’s best 4th line centre, by a mile.  The NHL is constantly progressing away from the old system where a 4th line consisted of a two enforcers and a dud who played seven minutes per night.  And, the Leafs are potentially the deepest team in the NHL with forwards.

Additionally, you can’t trade either player for very much, so keeping them and considering them trade-deadline rentals (that you get for the whole season and don’t have to pay for) makes a lot of sense.

So what if the Leafs dressed four more-or-less equal lines?  They already score an edge against most teams when one line consists of a 40 goal centre, another has a 32 goal centre, and JVR and Mitch Marner are on the third line.  If you added in a fourth line that was as good as most teams second or third lines, you’d be in match-up heaven.

So what if the Leafs iced lines that looked like this:

Kapanen – Matthews – Marner

Komarov – Kadri  – Brown

JVR      –   Nylander – Hyman

Marleau – Bozak – Leivo 

The extra forwards would be Martin and Moore.

Analysis

A lineup like that features a star centre and a dynamic winger and a defensive winger on the top three lines.  It also features what would be perhaps the most purely talented line in the NHL, and a fourth line that could dominate pretty much all the weak competition it encounters.

As far as I know, no team has every tried to roll four lines at a relatively even distribution of ice-time, nor have I ever heard of a team putting  a 55 point offensive centre on the fourth line. But I think it actually makes a lot of sense.

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Like I said before, you’re going to get a lot of really good matchups.  Third pairing defenseman don’t typically have to face players like Nylander and JVR for 100% of a game.  And the benefits to a fourth line that is useful go beyond matchups.  Less ice time can keep the players fresh longer, not only deeper into the season, but deeper into games.

Conclusion

There are also potential health benefits. I have no way of testing this, but a hypothesis that tired players get injured more frequently at least sounds reasonable.  Furthermore, since the team has so many offensive players, there are creative things they could do in order to maximize their advantages.

The difference between Matthews and other players is more pronounced at regular strength than on the PP, so one thing a lineup like this would allow is to limit PP time for the Matthews/Marner line and give them extra 5v5 time.  Since the bottom nine players in the above lines could themselves make up two above-average PP units, this is another way the Leafs could get a sneaky edge.

Next: Matthews Is Going to Win the Hart Trophy

The point is, with this many players, and this much skill, the Toronto Maple Leafs have a crazy amount of options.  In a salary cap world, it is very hard to have so much talent on one team and the Leafs – even with their relatively weak defense – should very much be a contender this season.