The Toronto Maple Leafs begin their quest for the Cup tonight in Boston.
The Toronto Maple Leafs, after a somewhat disappointing, but still decent, regular season, find themselves on the road to start the playoffs.
The Bruins have the best line in hockey, and it features three elite players in Patrice Bergeron, David Pastrnak, and Brad Marchand.
Most hockey teams do not have three elite players on a single line, and so this line is incredibly dominant. In order to win, the Leafs will have to limit the damage that Boston’s top line does at even-strength.
To pull this off, Mike Babcock seems to be going with a pairing of Ron Hainsey and Morgan Rielly.
This is an objectively bad choice.
Rielly and Hainsey
The Toronto Maple Leafs play to use Hainsey against the best line in the league can only be summed up in one word: insanity.
It’s hard to imagine what Babcock is even thinking here.
In the last two season, when on the against David Pastrnak, Hainsey has a Corsi-For rating of 40.7%..
Against Marchand, it’s 41.13%.
Against Bergeron, it’s 41.84%.
These are the numbers of a player getting absolutely caved-in. They are enforcer-level numbers, and demonstrate a complete domination on Boston’s part.
Incredibly, these numbers dropped in last year’s playoffs when Bergeron vs Hainsey resulted in Hainsey putting up a 35% Corsi.
Some people still have a bias against Corsi, but it’s the most predictive stat that we have, and you need a crazy amount of luck in order succeed when 6.5 of every ten shot attempts are going against you. (Stats naturalstattrick.com)
The reason Babcock probably wants to use this pairing, is that despite the domination, the Leafs managed to break even in goals last year when Hainsey was on the ice. The problem is that that required the Leafs to have a high shooting and save percentage in order to make that happen.
The long term prognosis of a player who allows almost 60% of shot attempts is that they will almost certainly be a minus, and that any positive results that occur under those circumstances require getting lucky, something that you can’t count on.
Besides the bad numbers Hainsey puts up against the top line of the Bruins, you also have to factor that you’re wasting your best offensive catalyst in Morgan Rielly. If he doesn’t have the puck, he’s next to useless, so it’s in the Leafs best interest to get him out in situations where he can take advantage of his skill set.
The Toronto Maple Leafs best bet to counter the Bruins top line would be the Travis Dermott, Jake Gardiner pairing. They are the strongest over-all pairing and stand the best chance of breaking even against the Marchand line, which is really all the Leafs need to do to win.