Toronto Maple Leafs: How Did Mike Babcock Follow-Up His Terrible Performance?

The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Pittsburgh Penguins by a score of 3-2.

That’s all that really matters.  The Toronto Maple Leafs won, and we should be happy.  So please stop reading now if you’re not a big hockey nerd who is obsessed with minutia.

Last chance.

Still here?

OK then it’s time to jump into the deep end and try to figure out what Mike Babcock is thinking.  On Friday he coached a truly awful game. 

The game in Detroit saw Morgan Rielly play 28 minutes (eight more than any other defenseman),  and Babcock play William Nylander and Nazem Kadri for less than  ten minutes (5v5) despite the pair coming off their best game of the season.  (They combined for six points).

Anreas Johnsson only played seven minutes, and so the Leafs lost by one goal in a night when they left an entire first-line’s worth of talent on the bench for the majority of the night.

So how did Babcock follow up this performance?

Mike Babcock

The Leafs performed well last night, but my main point of interest is to see how Babcock allotted his ice time after the debacle in Detroit.

Nikita Zaitsev had one of the worst games possible on Friday. He put up a 13% CF rating while playing top four minutes, which I didn’t even know was possible.  In the NHL, 48% is pretty bad, so 13% is just down right lousy.

So how does Babcock follow this up? By giving Zaitsev the most ice time on the team (5v5), of course!

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The Toronto Maple Leafs won, so I guess I can’t be too critical, but honestly, what the Hell is he doing?

At 5v5 he played Zaitsev the most (48.79%) followed by Hainsey (50%), Muzzin (64%), Rielly (62%), Gardner (48.72) and then Dermott (58.9%).

Zaitsev, Hainsey and Gardiner all played fine. Gardiner had two points.  In one game, 48% amounts to only about one shot-attempt difference.  But the other three (Muzzin, Rielly and Dermott) all had great games with significant possession advantages for the Leafs.

When does it make sense for a coach to play his two worst defenseman the most? It is a bizarre decision.

Travis Dermott as the sixth defenseman is a total waste.  Whatever they’re going to get from Muzzin, if the opportunity cost to use his comes out of Dermott’s ice time, it’s wasteful.

As for the forwards, William Nylander at 13:46 is pretty light for the talent he has, and Nazem Kadri at just 12 minutes is coaching blunder on par with playing Zaitsev the most minutes.  It’s just a waste to have Andreas Johnsson on the fourth line.

Or what about playing Zach Hyman for a minute more than Mitch Marner? Or the fact that Marner played less at 5v5 than Hyman, Marleau and Kapanen.

This isn’t a game where there were very many penalties, either.  Pittsburgh had one power-play and the Toronto Maple Leafs had two.

In a game against one of the NHL’s best teams, in a follow up to a disastrous loss to one of the worst teams, Mike Babcock used Zaitsev and Hainsey as his second and third defenseman.

He also failed to get William Nylander, Andreas Johnsson and Nazem Kadri into the game enough.Going forward, Babcock has to get his ice time allotments under control.

Improvement Needed

He’s got to get star forwards Kadri and Nylander into more action, if that means bring Kadri up to play the wing on a few shifts per game with Mathews, so be it. And,  William Nylander should move back to his spot with Matthews already, enough is enough.

As for the blue line, after 25 minutes together, Muzzin and Rielly are a 59% pairing, so that is going to work out exactly like we thought it would.

Babcock might want to indulge in that pairing a little more and not rely on Hainsey and Zaitsev so much.

Gardiner and Dermott have been together for 57 minutes and they have been a 64%  pairing.  This should be the Leafs second pairing.

The Leafs won, and ultimately that is the point.  The team was off for over a week, and they added a player whose acquisition affects the way the entire roster is deployed.  Perhaps this is why Babcock has made such weird decisions this weekend.

Or perhaps he has his own reasoning. Certainly he’s earned the benefit of the doubt.  But some things – Dermott is better than Hainsey and Zaitsev; Mitch Marner should be getting more ice time than most of the other forwards – are so obvious they must be questioned when they don’t happen.

It will be interesting to see what happens going forward.

Stats from Naturastattrick.com