Toronto Maple Leafs: Load Management and History

What can the Toronto Maple Leafs learn from history?

Philosopher George Santayana once famously said, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”

And while philosophers tend to throw out some pretty questionable quotes every now and again (I’m a political science major who can confirm this as fact), Santayana’s parable seemingly holds more water than most.

It’s how life works, really. A child touches a hot stove out of curiosity, burns their hand, and learns the timeless life lesson that hot + hand = pain. No more stove touching after that.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have scalded their hands raw in the hopes of a Stanley Cup for the past 52 years. With their pursuit closer than ever now in 2018-19, what does history, when confined to the Mike Babcock Era, have to say about their odds?

A lot, actually. Santayana, you’ve done it again!

Beginning his tenure prior to the 2015-16 campaign, this is Babcock’s fourth season behind the Leafs’ bench. The veteran coach has been in Toronto long enough to watch three Stanley Cups be awarded to two different teams that happened to not be his own, with the potential for a fourth to follow suit later this year. Naturally, what does one do after continually observing those around them succeed? Figure out the keys to their success and apply it themselves, of course!

Let’s give that a shot.

Take a look at the construction of each Stanley Cup winner from the past three seasons and you’ll notice shared traits immediately; deep, skilled rosters with an abundance of speed, a heightened emphasis on puck possession, and a centre corps which bears at least three above-average options down the middle.

The Leafs more or less have all of that. Their forward corps can go toe-to-toe with any other, their even strength possession numbers are among the best in the league, and their centre depth consists of Auston Matthews, John Tavares, and Nazem Kadri.

Check, check, and check, right? Well, there’s obviously more to it than that.

Peer a little deeper, and you’ll find a relatively unnoticed trend which extends throughout each Cup winner from 2015-2018. That trend, in the simplest of terms, is the load management of their goaltenders.

One of hockey’s most celebrated narratives is that of the “workhorse goaltender” – a two-goalie system concept in which the starter plays 65-70 games per season while his backup mops up the remaining 12-17. As is the case with most hockey traditions, its merits have reached “outdated” status in recent years.

Nevertheless, identify the most publically celebrated netminders in the league today, and they each fit this bill.

Excluding those in which his workload was limited by injury or a lockout, Henrik Lundqvist started a minimum of 62 games each season between 2008-09 and 2017-18. When applying those same parameters to Carey Price (which is admittedly a more significant caveat given his injury history), he’s started at least 59 games in each fully-healthy campaign from the 2010-11 season to this current one, topping out at 72 along the way. Pekka Rinne‘s 2014-15 to 2017-18 seasons consisted of 64, 66, 61, and 59 starts, respectively.

These are what hockey traditionalists view as the Dominic Haseks and Patrick Roys of the modern era – whose creases are theirs and theirs alone, only to be rented out sparingly on select occasions each year. Besides their gargantuan games played totals, what do Lundqvist, Price, and Rinne all have in common, as well?

They’ve never won a Stanley Cup. Not in the past three years, not ever.

No Stanley Cup-winning roster, in fact, has featured a goaltender with over 60 starts since Jonathan Quick hit 69 for the eventual-champion Los Angeles Kings in 2011-12.

That period spans all of six years, otherwise presenting an appropriate sample size for the results to actually hold merit. Be it either through accidental circumstances or a conscious effort to preserve their last line of defence, no team has captured hockey’s greatest prize while leaning on a “workhouse goaltender” since Brian Burke held sole control over the hockey operations of the Maple Leafs.

But let’s confine this information to the past three seasons. You know, for research purposes. And to account for Babcock’s time in Toronto.

The Pittsburgh Penguins won their first of two consecutive Stanley Cups in 2015-16 with Marc-Andre Fleury starting 58 games in the regular season – the most amongst his sample size in this case.

The caveat here, however, is that Fleury’s workload may have actually exceeded those 58 starts were it not for a concussion he suffered on March 31st, in a relatively meaningless contest with just 5 games left in the season and the Penguins already locked into a playoff spot.

Why was Pittsburgh putting their starter at risk in such a low-leverage circumstance without any pressing need to do so? We may never know. A well-rested Matt Murray went on to start 21 games that postseason, finding Stanley Cup glory as his team’s mercifully present backup plan.

Fast forward to the next year, and both Fleury and Murray’s respective workloads became relatively split, with the former logging 38 starts to the latter’s 49. That division of labour, while likely not sitting too well with Fleury at the time, ultimately saved the Penguins’ season.

When the injury bug proceeded to strike in the playoffs once again – this time feasting on Murray – Pittsburgh had put themselves in a position where turning to Fleury as a second capable net option with little performance drop off was a viable avenue. An option, mind you, who’d been given just enough regular season starts to find a suitable rhythm, but not too many to be burnt out, either.

End result: another Stanley Cup.

Venturing into this past season now, it was the Washington Capitals’ turn to capture the mug of Lord Stanley. Doing so in dramatic fashion, they managed to accomplish that feat, funnily enough, without leaning on a “workhorse goaltender” of their own, as well. Brayden Holtby held down the 2018-19 starter’s crease for 54 games while Phillip Grubauer relieved him for 35.

You’ll never guess what happened next.

In a shocking turn of events – and by “shocking”, I mean “this has happened for three straight years now” – plans went awry for the Capitals late in the year and Holtby’s performance dipped so steeply down the stretch that he only saw duty for 14 of Washington’s final 28 games.

It was Grubauer, in fact, who began the 2018 playoffs as the Capitals’ starter. And when Grubauer then proceeded to falter as well, Barry Trotz turned back over to Holtby – who himself had only seen game action 14 times over the past 65 days, at that point – out of necessity and rode him all the way to the franchise’s first Stanley Cup.

Once again, the Capitals weathered two potentially season-ending catastrophes thanks to their duo of above-average net options whose respective workloads happened to strike a perfect balance between momentum and exhaustion.

So, what is history telling us here? What does George Santanaya want Mike Babcock and the entire Maple Leafs’ coaching staff to learn from all of this, lest they be doomed to repeat past failures?

For one, history makes it abundantly clear that hockey is an absurdly unpredictable sport, where the worst-case scenario waits around every corner to strike at the worst possible time. A Frederik Andersen injury over their remaining stretch of the schedule would serve as the worst-case scenario for the Leafs.

Good thing Andersen hasn’t admitted to playing while “banged up” lately.

Andersen’s play, not to mention, has taken a significant dip over the season’s second half as of late. When Holtby’s own similar stretch-drive struggles forced Grubauer into playoff duty in 2018, Grubauer, at least, had over 30 games of prior action from which to draw momentum.

Garret Sparks sits at 18 at the moment. That is a chasm of difference.

History does not jive with this. No matter how valiantly Babcock attempts to use Andersen in accordance with the outdated “workhorse” archetype, there is a substantial track record, compiled over his entire tenure in Toronto, that clearly demonstrates its lack of sustainability.

No recent Cup winner has done so on the back of a “workhorse”. The avenue they’ve opted to travel down instead features a suitable contingency plan, a workload balance between stagnancy and excess, and the wherewithal to treat deployment with contextualized restraint.

That simply has not been the case with the Leafs this season.

When it comes to Andersen’s health, it might be time to look back before moving forward. You never know what you might learn.

Thanks for reading!

All historical & statistical information courtesy of HockeyReference.com