Lucas Bolt
The easy route would just to be to fire Mike Babcock and have Sheldon Keefe be with the team the next morning. I don’t believe Mike Babcock is the problem though.
GM Kyle Dubas’ philosophy on how a team should look like consist of the premise of speed and skill. Now the Leafs do have a team-based off of this philosophy but it doesn’t seem to be working.
We are in the new age of the NHL where GM’s are looking to take high skill players in the draft. With the likes of Cale Makar, and Quinn Hughes creating a storm in the league there is a reason to take this philosophy more seriously.
That being said the latest teams to win the Stanley cups have all had skilled players but a countless number of big bodies willing to do the dirty work. The Leafs do have a few grinders and high energy guys on their team in the likes of Hyman (yet to play this season), Moore, Kerfoot, Kapanen etc. But, the core of the team that Dubas wants to build around, that being Matthews, Marner, Tavares, Nylander sometimes go unnoticed on the ice and your left wondering if they even played the game some nights.
For Matthews and Marner especially, when you are making so much money if you are not scoring you have to make an impact some other way whether that be on the PK or backchecking etc.
When the 3rd line looks better than the 2nd and 1st line most nights that’s a problem.
This team needs a reshuffle and the best trade chip to do that while not hurting the team would be Nylander. If you package him with a piece or two you could probably get somebody like Josh Manson, and Nick Ritchie. Both big bodies and can give a hit that change the dynamic of the team.