Top 4 Concerns About the Toronto Maple Leafs
The Toronto Maple Leafs are 4-0 in the preseaon.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have added John Tavares and they have Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and Morgan Rielly. My favorite players Nazem Kadri and Jake Gardiner remain with the team.
They are the Stanley Cup Favorites, entering the season.
They’ve got a Vezina quality goalie, and the best centre depth in the NHL.
Kasperi Kapanen and Andreas Johnsson look to make up the best fourth line in the history of the NHL. (Maybe?)
Everything looks pretty sweet. Optimism is high. There is every reason to believe that the Toronto Maple Leafs could win their division this year. That they could win the President’s Trophy. That they could win the Stanley Cup.
They could have Hart, Art Ross and Norris candidates.
In short- it’s potentially the best season ever for the team in the Blue and White.
But there are concerns.
Which is fine, everything can’t be perfect. It probably never will be.
But there are concerns.
So let’s talk about them.
Mike Babcock
Mike Babcock is not my biggest concern about the Toronto Maple Leafs, but he does worry me a bit.
I don’t doubt that he is a great coach, motivator and person. I love to hear him talk and I consider him to be one of the most interesting and respectable people in the NHL.
But I worry about if he’s the proper coach for a team in today’s NHL. The game has changed a lot in the last several years and Mike Babcock is old-school and conservative (with his strategies and lineups, I don’t mean politically).
At the same time, you couldn’t get to where Mike Babcock is or earn the respect that he has if you weren’t willing to listen to other people, and to change your ways. I have no doubt he’s willing to adapt. He’s shown he can.
But will it be enough?
Can the coach of the league’s most progressive front office be such a an old-school guy? I think he can be. I think the balance is important.
But I still see the Leafs making non-optimal lineup decisions. I still see them banging the puck off the glass. I see veterans getting placed higher in the lineup than players that are better. (Marleau is arguably not as good as Leivo, Brown, Kapanen or Johnsson, for insance).
He still dressed Polak whenever he could. Kapanen looks like he’s on the fourth line and Ron Hainsey hasn’t been demoted.
Mike Babcock is a concern.
Contracts
William Nylander missing training camp is a terrible thing for a team who expects to compete for the Stanley Cup.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have this year – one year only – in which Matthews and Marner are still cheap. They need to use this year smartly because even though they’ll have years of a competitiveness, this situation will never come again. It will never be this easy.
It’s simple – the Leafs will never, ever, get two players like Marner and Matthews this cheap again, which means they get to load up with more good players fitting in under the cap then a team normally can.
But not signing Nylander takes some of the advantage they have away. If he’s not on the team, if he’s not at full speed, the Leafs will be iceing a worse team than they can.
It’s unacceptable that they don’t just get his done.
Marner and Matthews
Worse, is the Leafs are playing with fire. As anyone with eyes can tell you, Mitch Marner and John Tavares are poised to be among the best, if not the actual best, duo in the NHL.
It looks like they were made for each other, and that each of then will score 100 points. That leaves Auston Matthews to personally destroy the second defensive unit of all other teams in the NHL.
So good luck paying them next year when the cap goes up and the NHL announces a new expansion team, with a lock-out looming and the two of them combining for 85 goals and 200 points.
The Toronto Maple Leafs should be doing everything they can to sign them now. And maybe they are. But they aren’t signed and until they are, it will concern me.
Trades
My third concern is that the team hasn’t done anything to improve since July 2nd.
As great as John Tavares is, it’s a lot to ask the Leafs to repeat last year’s sixth place (tie) in the standings with their current team defense. The Leafs were among the worst teams last year for shots-allowed and scoring chances against. They were bottom-half of the league in possession and were buoyed up by a career year from Frederick Andersen.
You can’t expect Andersen to repeat last year’s heroics. It might happen, but goalies are way too volatile to count on it.
You can’t expect Andreas Johnsson and Kasperi Kapanen to fully replace Tyler Bozak and James Van Riemsdyk.
The blue-line has potential (Carrick and Dermott have great stats together, as do Rielly and Gardiner) but the coach doesn’t seem interested in those pairings. I like Borgman, Carrick, Marincin, Dermott and Liljegren, but most of them don’t seem capable of penetrating Babcock’s unflinching love of veteran players.
Nikita Zaitsev is almost guaranteed a top-four spot despite being terrible last year. Ron Hainsey is most likely the worst top four player on a contending team in the NHL.
The Toronto Leafs appear to be returning from being one of the worst defensive teams in the NHL with the exact same top four defenseman, and worse, they don’t seem open to internal promotions. (Babcock called it impossible for Liljegren to make the team, but really? Liljegren couldn’t outplay Hainsey? See concern #1).
The Leafs have prospect and draft pick capital they can use to improve their blueline without even touching the NHL roster. It’s frustrating to see San Jose add the NHL’s best defenseman with a package the Leafs could easily match or exceed.
Ron Hainsey
Instead of seeing what he might have in Timothy Liljegren, Mike Babcock played Ron Hainsey for over 20 minutes the other night.
In a pre-season game.
Ron Hainsey, 37, and terrible at everything other than penalty killing, slow as Roman Polak after a tenth knee surgery, and anchor for the team’s best defenseman, is poised to not only make the team, but play on the top pairing.
Ron Hainsey should retire. He’s got a Stanley Cup, he’s got millions and millions of dollars and he’s well respected.
But if the coach of his team was objective, he would be cut.
Instead, he’ll skate on his off-side and make the Leafs best defenseman worse.
Here is a list of more effective defenseman in the Leafs organization: Jake Gardiner, Morgan Rielly, Connor Carrick, Travis Dermott, Justin Holl, Andreas Borgman, Calle Rosen, Martin Marincin, Nikita Zaitsev and Timothy Liljegren.
So why are the Toronto Maple Leafs so insistent on dressing arguably their 11th best defenseman in their top four?
No one knows.
It’s just a bad, bad, bad idea.
The Leafs allow too many shots, and they need to improve their blue-line.
But they keep acting like Ron Hainsey is good.
What he actually is, is a negative possession player who bleeds shots against and offers little, to no offense.
I don’t get it. It’s my biggest concern and frustration. The Toronto Maple Leafs are on the verge of being a devastatingly effective team.
But to do so, they need to get their coach into this century. They’ve got to sign their core, improve their team via trade and cut Ron Hainsey from the roster.
Top Ten Prospects. dark. Next
But they better get crackin’, cause the NHL season is less than two weeks away.