Toronto Maple Leafs Do Not Need to “Get Heavier”

The Toronto Maple Leafs are not a gritty team.

The Toronto Maple Leafs aren’t gritty, heavy, hard to play against, tough, rough, or scary in the traditional hockey sense.

So what?

The idea that the Leafs are in need of becoming a less skilled, bigger, tougher team is preposterous.

But you can’t escape it.

The Leafs Are Tough Enough

The one thing that got completely overblown to the point of overkill was the idea that the Leafs were going to lose some of their young players to offer sheets.

Given that offer sheets barely exist, this was always a dumb narrative.  Apparently no one stopped to think for five minutes that you might be able to sign all your expensive players and do so by not paying your medium level players.

So we were fed thousands of hours of talk about how Matthews or Nylander or Marner or Johnsson or Kapanen were going to get offer sheets in the off season.  Then Nylander signed, and then Matthews signed, and it’s rumored Marner will sign too.

And if any GM is dumb enough to offersheet a player with less than one year success in the NHL, then more power to him, but it’s never going to happen.

And it was obvious all along if you stopped to think about it.

Same thing goes with the Leafs current lineup.

Everyone talks about how they need to add toughness, but if you think about it, it’s obvious they they don’t need to do that.  At all.

Sportsnet’s Nick Kypreos is an excellent hockey analyst, but yesterday when he said that the Leafs need to get “heavier” to play the Boston Bruins, he was wrong.

The Bruins might need to make adjustments to handle the Leafs, but the Leafs don’t need to worry about anyone.  They are the ones who can follow John Tavares up with Auston Matthews and then Nazem Kadri.

They are the ones who can set it up so that one of Muzzin, Rielly or Gardiner is always on the ice.

The Leafs are not interested in following hockey dogma, as was proven last year when they sat Matt Martin to play Andreas Johnsson.  Or when the iced an entire lineup of skill players with zero enforcers or grinders.

And they’re fine.

People say the game changes in the spring. It doesn’t.  If you can skate and score and be more talented than the other team, that can’t be beaten with toughness.

Does anyone seriously and honestly think the Leafs would have won last year vs Boston if they’d only played Martin and Polak more?  Give me a break.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are totally fine.  If they can get more talented, then they should. But getting heavier?  I think not.  Why would they add a Wayne Simmonds when they already score enough goals and have trouble suppressing shots-against?  They don’t need his goals or his bad defense.  How is 12 minutes per night from your 3rd line left winger going to tip the scales of toughness anyways?

And who would Babcock take out to play Simmonds?  Not Nylander, Marner, Marleau or Hyman.  So that leave’s two players who are way better than Wayne Simmonds in Kasperi Kapanen and Andreas Johnsson.  So by definition, if the Leafs add a power winger, they’ll be losing talent.

It makes no sense.

The whole thing is preposterous.

In the NHL being a tough player is overrated.  The Toronto Maple Leafs do not need to get heavier, tough or harder to play against.  They just need to get rid of Ron Hainsey and to play Auston Matthews a bit more.

That’s it.