Toronto Maple Leafs: Most Intriguing Training Camp Battles

The Toronto Maple Leafs are less than a month out from the beginning of training camp.

Needless to say, it’s shaping up to be one you won’t want to miss. With such a high degree of roster turnover from previous years, new players will be vying for lineup spots in a wide open field.

Every day will be a battle. Here are the two most intriguing of all.

Holl vs Carrick

In all honesty, this battle may be the tightest.

Since Kyle Dubas took over as GM back in May, we’ve at the very least been capable of formulating a relative idea of his thought process. Mobility over grit, possession over shutdown, progress over lethargy, you get it.

But here? I have no idea what he’s thinking.

Justin Holl and Connor Carrick sit in a heated footrace for one spot, with each player ticking various boxes of the “Dubas Player Checklist”. Both have served time on Dubas’ Marlies to great respective success in the past and the pair share a mould of strong skating possession monsters who rarely make what anyone would consider the “safe play”.

Which brings us to the coach.

Mike Babcock still wields his title of decision maker regarding all lineup decisions, and it was abundantly obvious to just about anyone who watched Leafs hockey last season that he didn’t seem all too thrilled with Carrick’s play. “Good pl’ers” aside, it says a lot about how your coach feels about you when you’re scratched for Roman Polak more often than not.

That’s a tough pill to swallow.

Carrick’s underlying numbers certainly painted him as an objectively better option than Polak last year, someone who didn’t murder any momentum whenever the puck landed on his stick. And yet, Babcock still willingly chose the latter when preparing for crunch time.

Holl, on the other hand, is decidedly NOT the ideal third pairing Babcock defenceman.

Defensive contributions from the 26-year-old stem from his prowess for keeping the puck out of reach from the opposition. Whereas Babcock loves himself a shot blocker, body thrower, and board battle winner on the blueline, Holl never fits that bill because he’s never needed to.

It’s quite difficult to block a shot, throw your body, or win a defensive board battle when your opponent never has the puck.

So, blasé as it may be, this might come down to the money.

The two RFA’s both inked contract extensions early this summer in an effort to establish their continued commitment to this team. Although, the fine print uncovers a noticeable gap of difference.

For Holl, he did pretty well for himself, managing to negotiate two years of term on his new deal which carries an annual cap hit of $675,000. That’s a decent number for 2 total games of NHL experience, albeit an easily buriable one as well.

Carrick’s new deal is nearly the inverse, including just a single year of term to go with an AAV which laps Holl’s. Now that he’s locked in to earn $1.35 million in 2018-19, sentencing Carrick to press box purgatory is hardly justifiable considering how Holl counts half as much against the cap with another year of team control.

Early odds list this to be advantage Carrick, but that’s far from set in stone.

Ennis vs Leivo

Yet another battle between two players bucking Babcockian archetypes.

Let’s just clear something up from the get-go; as long as Mike Babcock coaches the Toronto Maple Leafs, Josh Leivo will always be the underdog in any training camp battle he happens to participate in.

That’s not subjective. That’s just a fact. How many of you would pay an unfathomable amount of money to learn what exactly Leivo did to make his coach hate him this much? I know I would.

Alas, it will forever remain one of the Earth’s greatest unsolved mysteries.

Ironically, size manages to be the biggest factor working against Tyler Ennis right now. Get it? Because he’s short? I guess this is a lot funnier when you ignore that Ennis and I are actually the same height.

Anyway, Ennis seems to be the clear frontrunner at this point, and not simply due to his coveted status as Not Josh Leivo™, but thanks to some favourable numbers which hint at a bounce-back campaign as well.

The former-20 goal scorer is now 100% healthy for the first time in what feels like decades, and, were he to emerge with the 4^th line RW spot, is primed for some heavily sheltered minutes on one of the NHL’s most offensively lethal rosters. It’s hard to imagine a more favourable position.

Nevertheless, this may hinge on Dubas.

In Leivo’s case, there are a number of connections at play between player and GM. Not only did Leivo play featured minutes on the Dubas Marlies of 2015-16, he did so at a point-per-game pace to boot.

Leivo’s numbers have painted him as a capable contributor left in waiting for quite some time now, and if anyone could be expected to finally give the poor guy a legitimate chance, it would be Dubas.

Where Leivo can find a hint of solace this year is in knowing that he’ll be reporting to a training camp where the playing field isn’t slanted against him.

Dubas can’t necessarily tell Babcock who to play, that’s not his job, but he’s also made a point to reiterate that the best players will be the ones to put themselves in the best positions.

If Leivo makes a truly compelling case for both himself and his full-time employment, it’ll be markedly difficult for Babcock to ignore it.

These are good problems to have.

Thanks for reading!