The Toronto Maple Leafs brought in two pretty well-known assistant coaches.
During the summer, the Toronto Maple Leafs hired two new assistant coaches. One will deal with the power-play and one will work with the penalty killers.
Paul McFarland came home from the Florida Panthers and the Leafs needed it badly. In Florida, McFarland dealt with the power-play, and with how Toronto’s power-play went last season, this is a grand slam of a hire.
Florida was 2nd in the NHL for power play percentage with 26.8%, only behind the Tampa Bay Lightning. That’s a good total that McFarland hopefully brings with him to Toronto. To compare with the Leafs numbers; Toronto finished 8th in power play percentage with 21.8% power-play goals scored.
The gap between the two totals is pretty big, and if McFarland can fix this power play that was amazing in the regular season, and invisible in the playoffs, then we could see the Leafs atop the league in special teams all together.
The other guy.
Last year, the Leafs had a decent penalty kill that finished 16th, with 79.9% penalties killed. But, now there’s a new coach taking it over and his name is, Dave Hakstol.
Before coming to Toronto, Hakstol was the head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers for four years. There was no taking care of the power-play or penalty kill, but I’m sure it won’t be an issue for the new assistant.
With Brown, Hainsey and Zaitsev leaving, and Hyman starting the year on the I.R, it will be interesting to see who the Leafs use on their PK this year.
Given the Leafs personnel, Hakstol should have a very dynamic penalty kill to work with. I’m definitely not worried about how he does this season, as long as it finishes top-ten.
My predictions:
I think both of the new assistant coaches will do just fine.
McFarland should be able to make this power-play the best in the league, as long as he has a different approach to each power-play, which the Leafs did not have last season.
Hakstol has a bucket of players he can use on either of his two penalty kill units, which will be a savior. I think the PK unit finishes in the top-ten by the end of the season.
All I care about is, whether or not the power-play can work in the playoffs, and whether or not the Leafs can keep pucks out of their net and kill penalties. If that all works out, both of these coaches turned out to be very good hires.