Toronto Maple Leafs Coaching Staff Continues to Make Questionable Decisions

The Toronto Maple Leafs faced a hot opponent in the New York Islanders who are 9-0-1 in the last 10, and the Leafs were troubled with brutal special teams and inconsistency throughout the course of the game.

The Toronto Maple Leafs got outplayed by the islanders slightly at 5v5 and drastically on special teams, this has been a common theme for the Leafs season.

It does not seem like this team is living up to their contender status.

It was a bad game for the coaching staff, and a worse game to watch.  

Toronto Maple Leafs Coaching Breakdown

The reaction to the ending result of this game was made up of consistent negative comments towards the coaching staff and many on Leafs twitter were tweeting the hashtag #FireBabcock.

The first issue with the coaching staff’s decisions comes on with special teams.

Most notably the first powerplay unit being taken off only a minute into the powerplay. This routine is one that makes zero sense when you have a powerplay loaded with the most talented hockey players in the world and a second unit lacking star talent.

Over the years the best powerplays have been known to play their first unit almost the whole two minutes, for context, Alexander Ovechkin is playing 73.97% of Washington’s powerplay this season, while Auston Matthews is playing 54.32%.

Those numbers present a glaring problem to me where Auston Matthews ice time is most valuable in an offensive situation such as on the man advantage.

The next issue is very obvious but none the less important to outline, both the power play and penalty kill are atrocious and unacceptable for a team with this much talent on it. I don’t see why either unit is near the bottom of the NHL in terms of success rate, with special teams being among the most important parts to coaching clearly this coaching staff is failing at their job.

The problems with the coaching staff is not finished quite yet. With the Leafs it is clear to me that Mike Babcock and his staff want this team to be something they are not built to be. The Leafs coaching staff are trying to play a similar style to a team with a roster like the Minnesota Wild should be playing but the Leafs roster is constructed for a more high event, “fun” game.

The last issue in this game was the usage of Zach Hyman who played more minutes than Auston Matthews the first game after coming back from an injury. But since Travis Dermott has come back from injury he has been limited to minutes less than the average third pair defensemen plays when clearly Dermott is superior to certain players playing above him.

All these reasons combined are why I think it may be time to pull the plug and #FireBabcock. This is not to say he would not be successful with a team such as the Islanders but he seems to have passed his era with this Leafs team.

Notable Performances from the players

Frederik Andersen

Andersen did not have his best game today, but we can not blame everything on him with all of the awful giveaways that lead to high danger chances against. Andersen has been outright amazing so far this November and we can not expect him to bail out the team every game.

Mikheyev-Kerfoot-Moore line

This trio of players put forth probably the most disappointing performance out of everyone on the team. I noticed Mikheyev taking more low percentage shots from far out when he could take his time looking for a pass or attempting to crash the net to make it worthwhile, in the NHL those easy shots do not go in.

Kerfoot is usually so strong at both sides of the ice and noticeably strong in transition every game, but this game he was silent throughout and seemed to fail to make an impact. For Moore the same thing applies for him as with Kerfoot, he was a disappointment.

The bottom line is that the Toronto Maple Leafs yet again lost an inferior team.