The Toronto Maple Leafs revamped blueline is looking like it’s going to be a strong point for the team this year.
With Morgan Rielly, Jake Muzzin and Tyson Barrie, the Toronto Maple Leafs have one of the best top-three defensemen groups in the NHL.
Travis Dermott was among the NHL leaders in both clean zone exits and entrances. He’s going to a top pairing guy before long.
Rasmus Sandin appears to have made the team, and he’s got more upside than your average third pairing guy.
The Leafs clearly have a great blue line, and I think one of the reasons it doesn’t get more notice is that Jake Muzzin is heavily underrated.
Toronto Maple Leafs and Jake Muzzin
Last year, Jake Muzzin arrived just in time for Travis Dermott and Jake Gardiner to get injured. When those two returned to the lineup, they weren’t their usual selves, and so the upgrade that adding Muzzin should have caused never really materialized.
A full season of Muzzin will make a huge difference.
He made a huge difference last year, and based on the hype surrounding him, I’m not sure many people realize just how good he was.
Muzzin played 30 games once he joined the Toronto Maple Leafs and put up a 54% possession rating that resulted in getting 53% of the shots and 61% of the goals.
Those are incredible numbers, that more or less make the Leafs one of the best teams in hockey whenever Muzzin hits the ice. What is crazier is how much the numbers go up whenever he got away from Nikita Zaitsev (for example they were a 51% pairing, but Muzzin with anyone else was a 57% player). (All stats naturalstattrick.com).
To boot, he had 11 5v5 points in 30 games, which projects to a 30 point pace (which makes sense, since if you include his L.A points, he finished with 29 for the year).
Now 29 5v5 points might not seem that great, but Rielly led the league with 43 and Muzzin’s 29 put him 13th in the NHL among defensemen, the 8th highest total, and just one point behind Tyson Barrie.
It goes under-reported, but the Toronto Maple Leafs have added two of the top ten best 5v5 point producing blue-liners in the NHL since last January.
A full season of Jake Muzzin is going to do wonders for the Toronto Maple Leafs. If you’re wondering how they improve while swapping out Kadri for Kerfoot, this is how. (Well, that and age related improvements expected from Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander).
Muzzin isn’t just a great defender, but he’s one of the best play-driving defensemen in the NHL, and at 5v5 (where 90% of the game is played) he’s one of the best in the league.