The Toronto Maple Leafs off season is here early, after a first round loss to the Boston Bruins.
For the Toronto Maple Leafs, the loss to the Bruins is frustrating, but at the same time, it’s an expected part of the process that every young team that wants to be a contender has to go through.
If winning was easy, it wouldn’t matter so much.
For the Leafs, their core players will take the lesson of the loss, while their management will make decisions on how to improve the roster.
One of those way is quite obvious: Do not sign Ron Hainsey.
Ron Hainsey
If Mike Babcock failed in any way, it is with Ron Hainsey. What was he thinking relying on the 38 year old to play top pairing minutes?
This was a move almost universally criticized, because it was like the Leafs were playing with one hand behind their back. They had arguably the best defenseman in the NHL this year in Morgan Rielly, and they intentionally sandbagged his effectiveness by sticking him with one of the worst players in the NHL.
When Rielly and Hainsey were on the ice together, they were a 49% pairing, while Morgan Rielly put up 55% possession numbers with anyone else. There aren’t excuses to be made about that regarding competition or usage – Ron Hainsey just made Morgan Rielly worse.
Maybe you’re a Hainsey fan. Maybe you know him personally. Doesn’t matter. Ron Hainsey made Morgan Rielly worse, and that is a fact.
Hainsey was thought to bring a steadying influence on the PK, but that PK cost the Toronto Maple Leafs their series against the Bruins.
Quite simply, Ron Hainsey is playing in a ridiculous position in the lineup and that’s on Mike Babcock, but it’s also on Kyle Dubas for not stepping in and ending it.
Over the course of the season, I said, at least 100 times “there is no way this team enters the Playoffs with Ron Hainsey and Nikita Zaitsev in their top four.”
But they did!
Now, caveat: they only did because once they acquired Jake Muzzin, Travis Dermott and Jake Gardiner got injured. When they returned, they were shadows of their healthy selves and had to be paired together on the third pairing, where, quite honestly they were garbage.
In retrospect, neither should have played and the Leafs should have used Calle Rosen and Igor Ozhiganov or Justin Holl.
Had the Leafs not had two of their best defenseman get injured, they would have probably used Dermott and Gardiner as a second pairing, while Muzzin would have joined Rielly on the top pairing.
If only!
Anyway, I see to have digressed from my point, and that point is that Ron Hainsey is awful and he should not be re-signed.
Despite playing with Rielly, Hainsey was on the ice for more shot-attempts, and shots against than for. Yes, he was among the leaders in plus/minus, but that is a goalie-dependent stat that has been totally discredited.
Hainsey’s expected-goal differential was negative. He had a positive goal differential because the Leafs goalies had a .929 save percentage, which is extremely high.
A quick look at Hainsey’s career stats shows that he has no positive effect on goalie save percentage (as no one does) as it is all over the board. (All stats naturalstattrick.com).
It is time for Ron Hainsey to retire or move to another team. The Toronto Maple Leafs cannot bring him back, even with the intention of playing him lower in the lineup, because you can’t trust Mike Babcock not to over use him.