Something is very off with the Toronto Maple Leafs at the minute. Could it be the players, the staff, the management or a combination of all of them.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are now 20 games into the regular season and there is no shortage of concerns and finger pointing up to this stage. Many are blaming the system, others blaming the coaching staff, the players and all the way up to the man responsible for assembling this team, the GM.
As is with any team-based sport, there is no single answer, when a problem exists it exists systemically. Players are underperforming, coaching staff are having utilisation issues and it seems clear that the team the GM has assembled doesn’t match the one that the coach envisions.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are also facing adversity this season that they haven’t really faced with this team yet. John Tavares has missed time and now Mitch Marner will also be out for a considerable amount of games. They also have moved on from their veteran leaders in Marleau and Hainsey and now when the team struggles it falls on the captain and his young assistants.
The Shanaplan
One thing could certainly be helped however, whilst I place no blame on this season’s shortcomings on any individual alone, there are a number of decisions that you can’t help but scratch your head about.
On a previous Steve Dangle Podcast, Sean Fitz-Gerald of the Athletic commented on Mike Babcock’s extremely strong sense of self. Whilst this is a very admirable character trait, one could see how this could hinder the progressive style a young team and their upper management are looking implement.
Also, on a previous episode of Spittin’ Chiclet’s, Nicklas Lidstrom alluded to the fact that Babcock is a very ‘hands on’ coach who likes to have much more to do with special teams than any other coaches he played for.
Considering Babcock’s clearly favourable style (low event) certainly doesn’t match the line-up assembled before him, both of these comments are concerning. Having bought in a very progressive thinking assistant in Paul MacFarlane, who famously once attempted a 5-man powerplay, Babcock’s overbearing style could really be muffling any creativity that we could be seeing.
The next concern is the pattern that is emerging in firing weak shots from the blueline and not actually activating a defenceman into the zone. Tyson Barrie has been criticised for his slow start, yet he went from being a number 1 defenceman on a playoff team to a number 4 with Toronto.
With his reduced role he has seen a massive reduction in usage on the man advantage. Also worth noting, 4 of his 5 points this season came in his first 3 games. Which doesn’t make it a far stretch to think that something tactically has changed about his game from the first few through to now.
If you can recall his first few games, Barrie frequently carried the puck in creating an overload down low. This is what his bread and butter was in Colorado and has him trailing only Brent Burns in primary points/60 at even strength across the previous three seasons.
It is exactly this that has disappeared from Barrie’s game recently. Considering his career to date, this doesn’t seem like a natural change for Barrie and appears much more likely to be something being coached into him.
As of today, we are 20 games into the season, and this is a time even Babcock has even identified as a marker. By now, the Toronto Maple Leafs should know exactly what they have and exactly what they don’t.
The issue remaining is, they seem to be hammering square pegs into round holes. This is a team with an abundance of offensive flare, three right shooting defencemen that Babcock asked for. The only glaring need is a backup goaltender, something that is irrelevant come playoffs.
The fact that the Toronto Maple Leafs have scraped back into the previous two games in the dying minutes when it appeared to be all over clearly should be a lesson. When it appears to be all over and players are given some freedom, they perform.
If the Toronto Maple Leafs and the coaching staff can’t get this sorted soon, the Shanaplan and the faces they’ve assembled up to this point need to be changed.