The Toronto Maple Leafs are a pretty good team with a great roster.
Based on the season so far, the Toronto Maple Leafs are not the NHL’s best team – they allow too many shots per game, they don’t have good enough puck possession metrics, and they aren’t as dominating as their roster suggests they could/should be.
Obviously they are hurt by playing Nikita Zaitsev and Ron Hainsey, and of course they’ll be an improved team when William Nylander rejoins Auston Matthews on the top line.
They will 100% upgrade their team and they should probably be Stanley Cup favorites.
But there is one thing they can do to make that closer to a reality. One thing they can do without trading anyone or doing anything too crazy that will instantly make them a better team:
Play their best players more.
Toronto Maple Leafs Ice Time
Morgan Rielly skates 22:25 and Jake Gardiner skates 21: 41. Together they combine for 43 out of 120 minutes per game. That isn’t near enough when you consider the gap between Gardiner, Rielly and the rest of the Leafs blue line, none of whom are anywhere close to their level.
11 Defenseman play over 25:00 per night. Despite being a top ten defenseman (and probably higher) Morgan Rielly is the 48th highest defenseman ranked for TOI per game.
Babcock could easily up the ice time of his two best defenseman and get another six minutes per game of good play.
On forward, it’s the same story.
Mitch Marner leads the team with 19:25 per game.
John Tavares 19:10
Auston Matthews 18:06
Nazem Kadri 16:52
William Nylander 15:22
As you can see, the Leafs five best forwards don’t actually play that much, and this is a huge tactical mistake by Mike Babcock. I’ll assume Nylander’s minutes are due to him missing so much time, but even so, this is actually pretty bad.
Alexander Barkov leads the NHL forwards with 23 minutes per game. That might be excessive, but the Leafs should have all five of these guys on the ice for at least 20 minutes, maybe more.
Five extra minutes of Auston Matthews per night would be deadly to other teams.
Why even have a fourth line centre? Just use the fourth line to get Kadri to the 20 minutes he’d get on literally any other team.
Mitch Marner, the Toronto Maple Leafs most used forward, ranks 37th among NHL forwards. There is no excuse for that.
Even conservatively, you could add ten minutes per game to the ice time of these five players and it would make a huge difference. But you could probably add way more. Matthews himself needs another four or five minutes per game.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have the players, they just need to play them.