Toronto Maple Leafs: Mike Babcock’s Absolutely Brutal Game

The Toronto Maple Leafs lost to the Detroit Red Wings last night.

Sure, they made it to overtime and picked up a point, but the Toronto Maple Leafs were outplayed by an inferior team, and they deserved to lose.

One of the reasons they lost last night is because Mike Babcock had one of the worst games of his career. 

Now, I definitely understand that Babcock is trying to work a new player into his lineup, and that that means finding new roles for everyone on his team, but some things that happened last night were inexcusable.

Bad Game

First of all, there is no excuse for Nazem Kadri and William Nylander playing under ten minutes 5v5.  If you lose by a goal and you leave that much talent on the bench all night, you don’t deserve to win.

Especially considering that in the Leafs last game Kadri had three goals and Nylander had three assists, this made no sense.

Seven minutes is pretty bad for Andreas Johnsson too, but at least there is the excuse of him coming off an injury.

How is it that Babcock played Brown, Kapanen, Hyman and Marleau more than he played Nylander and Kadri?  Especially coming of their best games of the season?  That is an absolutely pathetic mistake no NHL coach should be making.

Sure, there were lots of penalties, but the coach has to get his best players out there.  No excuses.  This is a worse mistake than Jake Gardiner has ever made, and it cost the Leafs the game.

It’s not the only weird move Babcock made either.

For some reason, Rielly played eight minutes more than any other defenseman.  Sure, Muzzin has to get his feet under him, so to speak, but he was 55%, and Gardiner was 60%, so they both should have been playing more.

Essentially splitting the 5v5 TOI between Muzzin, Gardiner and Hainsey is idiotic.  Hainsey, who was predictably a negative possession player, had only ten seconds less than Muzzin.

As for the PK, Hainsey was the most used and that has to end now that Muzzin is on board. Hopefully this was the last game we ever see with Hainsey as the team’s go-to PK defenseman.

Finally, Travis Dermott  needs to play more.  He was just over 12 minutes 5v5, but had a solid possession rating and played fine.  He had roughly the same minutes as Zaitsev, who was brutal.  Interestingly, while he played six minutes with Hainsey, he also played four minutes with Gardiner.

Perhaps this was Babcock’s best idea of the night, as the two put up an 85% CF in a very small sample size of four minutes.

Dermott needs to play the fourth most minutes on this team, that much is clear.

Overeall, Mike Babcock is a great coach and I’m happy he’s the coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs.  It’s got to be difficult trying to figure out the right combos when you get a new player on your team, and when you haven’t had much practice time and have been off for over a week.

At the same time, clearly Hainsey needs less ice time, and clearly Dermott needs more.   The Kadri/Nylander ice time is inexcusable though.  That arguably cost them the game.

I also think Igor Ozhiganov deserves to play.

Stats from Naturalstattrick.com