The Toronto Maple Leafs power play has been off to an OK start.
In five games so far this season, the Toronto Maple Leafs have scored five goals.
That is a very good number. It’s probably not even sustainable. Last season Tampa led the NHL in power-play goals and they didn’t even get 82 of them.
The Leafs are scoring at a 26% rate, and that is pretty good.
So what am I complaining about?
The Leafs famously changed their strategies on the man-advantage this season, and it’s looking great, but the deployment continues to be problematic. (all stats naturalstattrick.com).
Toronto Maple Leafs Power-Play
What I am complaining about specifically is that the Leafs are giving away goals by deploying their power-play in a fashion that suggests their coach has a concussion.
The Leafs power play so far has five goals, and four of them have come from the first unit. The Leafs, frustratingly, are still stacking one unit and then taking it off the ice after one minute.
Additionally, because they mix up the lines on the PP, they create a post-PP situation where they almost have to use their fourth line.
But a defending team just either tired out their best defensive players, or rested their top offensive players for two minutes, so coming out with your worst players after a PP is bad strategy.
Loading up your top unit and then taking it off the ice after 60 seconds is classic Babcock and it’s one of the most annoying things he does. And were talking about a guy who hands out a basketball after the games.
Additionally, it makes no sense to have the teams best passing forward, and best player at entering the zone with the puck on the second unity. (Nylander).
The Leafs have two options they should employ on the power-play:
Option #1:
Load up. This means swapping out Johnson for Nylander, moving Tavares back to the front of the net, and playing it for the full two minutes.
Option #2:
Continue to split minutes, but don’t put four of the best players on one line.
PP1 – Matthews, Nylander, Rielly + Johnson, Spezza
PP2 – Tavares, Marner, Barrie + Kapanen, Petan
Note that in this situation, the last two players are a) one player from the two star’s line and b) a player from the fourth line.
This allows the Leafs to exit the power-play with their third line, which is basically a second line on most teams: Mikheyev-Kerfoot-Moore.
There are so many advantages to either of these set ups. In fact, the only thing a coach can do to screw up a power play is load it up and take it off teh ice after half the time is over.
For the Toronto Maple Leafs to be better, Mike Babcock has got to be better.