The Toronto Maple Leafs power play was very frustrating last season.
Though they were actually very successful by any metric, the Toronto Maple Leafs were done in by a 12% shooting percentage on the power play.
This, along with having the second lowest amount of chances on the power-play contributed to the frustration.
But what was really frustrating was the fact that the coach stacked one unit with five super-stars, but switched the lines half way through, regardless.
Because the Leafs had three centres on their power-play, they were forced to get that unit off the ice after a minute.
This was the most annoying thing ever, since there was no need to have all three centres on the first unit, and it seemed like the Leafs were costing themselves goals due to stupidity.
This Year’s Power-Play
Hopefully the Leafs have learned their lesson and decided to either a) use one super unit for the entire two minutes or b) split their best players across two lines.
I would choose option B because I think that with the talent the Leafs have, there isn’t going to be much to gain by stacking.
What I would do, is create two units and use them equally. I would also make sure to balance between which unit starts the PP and which unit comes on second.
No one uses two defenseman on the same power-play, and the Leafs have two of the best in the world, as well as way more than eight forwards who would be acceptable on the man advantage, so this seems like a no-brainer to me.
Unit one should feature Auston Matthews, William Nylander and Morgan Rielly.
Unit two should feature John Tavares, Mitch Marner and Tyson Barrie.
Andreas Johnson, Kasperi Kapanen, Jason Spezza, Ilya Mikheyev, Alex Kerfoot, Zach Hyman (eventually) and Trevor Moore give the Leafs a lot of options to fill these units out, but really, who cares?
Having two three-man units where every player is a super-star is going to be awesome. The auxiliary guys don’t matter too much, but there’s enough talent that you basically can’t go wrong.
The main thing is that the Toronto Maple Leafs have two first units, and that they be swapped back and forth between starting and finishing the powerplay.
Having three centres on the same power play unit was objectively stupid, but at least that won’t be a problem. I’m interested to see what new strategies the new assistant coach employs, but I think the most important thing is avoiding the power-stack the Leafs were doing last year.
That is, with one exception: if you’re willing to play the same five guys for the whole two minutes, then stack away.