Toronto Maple Leafs: Hard to Imagine a Worse Idea than Stars on the PK

The Toronto Maple Leafs played Mitch Marner on the penalty kill last year.

It was one of the many bad ideas Toronto Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock had last year.

Now apparently their thinking of trying it with Matthews or Tavares on the PK.

It’s honestly hard to think of  worse idea.

Penalty Killing

Penalty Killing is a weird thing in the NHL because if a player gets on the PK, he gets a reputation for good defense, but good defense and playing on the PK are two different things.

On the PK, Ron Hainsey and Roman Polak are half decent because their biggest detriment (their lack of speed) is largely negated.

Marner is brutal defensively, but on the PK he’s OK because his speed as a winger is helpful and he can maybe get some breakaways.

But Marner should never be killing penalties.

Of players who played over 100 minutes on the PK, Marner had one of the lowest expected-goals-against in the entire league. That seams good, but he only played about one-third as much as the heaviest PK players.

Therefore the sample size is small, so it could have just been a fluke.

But let’s assume it isn’t.  Let’s assume Marner is the best penalty killer there is.  How much difference is he really going to make? The power-play is going to get scored on roughly one out of five chances.

The difference between shots-against per game on the PK between the best and worst team in the NHL is only seven.

Like it or not, most of that comes down to your goalie, and a huge portion of if you’ll be successful comes down to luck.

Given the fact that PK’s are goalie based, and don’t have a huge range between the best and worst, it is obvious that luck plays a very big role in whether a PK is successful or not. (Stats from naturlastattrick.com).

But at 5v5, you have a rock-solid guarantee that Marner (or other stars) will be successful.   Most third and fourth lines league-wide are interchangeable.  Even when they regularly post positive numbers, they don’t crush their opponents enough to outweigh luck.

But you know who does? Elite players.

If you could play Marner an extra three minutes per game, that’s three minutes per game you’re guaranteed to win those three minutes over time.

It’s hard to quantify how much an elite player might help a PK, but they’re so goalie and strategy dependent that it almost doesn’t matter.

A team would be better off to play it’s worst players on the PK, and save it’s best players for some bonus 5v5 shifts where they have much more predictable impacts.

It is a horrible idea for the Toronto Maple Leafs to use John Tavares, Mitch Marner or Auston Matthews on the PK.  Use them where you know they will help, and let them rest when the team takes a penalty.