The season is officially over for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
But that doesn’t mean the content must stop. Yes, although the Maple Leafs may not be playing actual hockey games anymore, the Editor in Leaf staff have been working around the clock to ensure that every angle from every offseason topic has been covered.
With so many pieces hitting the wall all at once, it’s natural that a few may have fallen through the cracks. So, let’s take a look at some of the past week’s most intriguing pieces.
Toronto Maple Leafs: Addressing Toughness Through Sports Science
“The Maple Leafs aren’t tough enough!” “This team gets pushed around way too much!” “William Nylander hates going into corners!”
Those are perhaps the three most common gripes held by a certain section of the Maple Leafs’ fanbase. They are also all wrong – particularly the third one, given how a lot of people just make their minds up on the spot about something without actually watching the games – and are driven by an active ignorance of the facts.
The way you perceive “toughness” in the NHL is not valued like it once was. This is a league built on speed and skill, not grit and brawn. The NHL’s best players are those who are capable of racking up obscene point totals or defending to the highest possible degree, and very, very few of them read as physical giants. Patrice Bergeron is the best defensive forward of this generation, and I can’t remember the last time I saw him actually hit someone. Rather, he plays an intelligent game that allows him to avoid unnecessarily wrecking his body.
And speaking of wrecking one’s body, Patrick opted to tackle the Leafs’ issues of toughness through the lens of sports science.
Give it a read!
“Hockey has a history of being behind the eight-ball when it comes to player development. In a podcast with Matt Nichol, the NHL’s first full-time S&C coach, he was pretty open on this point. I won’t break down the science on it (if you’re interested you can listen here), but basically, he ran tests and found that the energy system most players trained to improve fitness was in fact not the one used primarily during the game.
Even following these findings, players and coaches alike, still used the completely incorrect energy system as a cut-off for players deemed “unfit.”
Further to this point, there’s a tendency to believe “toughness” is an inherent ability in a player that cannot be taught. As if, every great athlete in the world was never able to add an inch of muscle or millisecond of speed.”
Toronto Maple Leafs: Mike Babcock Must Change
Truer words have never been spoken.
If I were a betting man – and I want to assure you all that I am not – I would feel comfortable putting a decent amount of money on the odds that Mike Babcock will not the head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs when they finally capture the Stanley Cup. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a terrific bench boss – one who gave the organization exactly what it needed at the time of his arrival. But Babcock’s methods have become grossly outdated in the years since he entered Toronto and, given his notoriously stubborn reputation, don’t seem likely to change anytime soon, either.
Is it time to move on? Well, that’s frankly up to him. If Babcock values his job as leader of hockey’s most prominent commodity, then he will have to alter his ways. Frankly, he has to. The Maple Leafs’ second consecutive game seven loss to the Boston Bruins in April hinged significantly on Babcock’s ludicrous refusal to play two of the best players in hockey, Auston Matthews and John Tavares, with their season on the line.
In his latest piece, Jeff takes a look at the task lying ahead of Babcock, and whether or not an old dog really can learn new tricks.
“Babcock has his idiosyncrasies as a coach and it may have affected the way that the team was constructed for this coming season. Dubas did not bring back one of his coach’s favourite players, Ron Hainsey. The defenceman not being offered a contract may be attributed to the Leafs effort to clear cap space or it could be an attempt to force Babcock’s hand.
Hainsey was regularly receiving the most playing time on the team. For a squad of youthful players, it may have seemed odd to the GM that a 37-year-old player (now 38) was seeing the most ice. Babcock appears to have always had a fondness for his veteran players, sometimes at the expense of his young stars. Might that explain why Dubas paid the price of a first-round draft pick to ship Patrick Marleau to the Carolina Hurricanes or was it just a cap related transaction?”
Toronto Maple Leafs Almost Certainly Lose Any Mitch Marner Trade
I am so sick of talking about Mitch Marner. Like, just thinking about it makes eyes glaze over in a fit of complete and utter apathy.
Will Marner decide to play ball and join the Leafs in training camp? That remains to be seen. The asking price he’s presented to the Maple Leafs on his new contract is outrageous – reportedly in line with Matthews’ new AAV – and his agent seemingly believes that negotiating through the media and turning the fanbase against the team is the best way to way to operate.
Unfortunately for Darren Ferris, he was wrong. Very wrong. Leafs fans have grown tired of hearing one of the most coddled Maple Leafs in recent memory complain about being “disrespected”. Marner’s attempts to curb public opinion have actually begun working against him and, if this situation isn’t sorted out soon, could leave lasting damage on his image; ala William Nylander.
And yet, the Maple Leafs can’t trade him. Not if they want to walk away as winners here. Marner is an absolutely terrific hockey player – the kind whose talent will never be able to score a return of equal value.
In a piece from this week, James takes a look at the pitfalls of any potential Marner deal, and why shuttling him out of town can only be considered a loss.
“The modern NHL Entry Draft begins in 1980 after the NHL absorbed the WHL and changed the drafting rules. Between 1980 and the Year they picked Mitch Marner, the Toronto Maple Leafs drafted 32 players in the first round – none of them as good as Marner.
Keep that in mind, and consider that in the NHL, elite players are basically all the matters, so if you had four picks it would be better to get one superstar and three duds, rather than four good players.
Therefore Marner for four draft picks is a bad deal because you have extremely low odds of getting someone as good as Marner, and replicating him is the ONLY way to win such a trade. It’s possible to win such a trade, but the odds are low.”
Thanks for reading!