Toronto Maple Leafs: One of the Problems With the New Coach’s System

The Toronto Maple Leafs are sitting 19-7-3 since Sheldon Keefe has taken over the head coaching job.

Clearly, under Keefe, the Toronto Maple Leafs have had an enormous amount of success but that does not mean that Keefe’s new system is faultless. There has been a mix of good and bad.

Keefe’s system has allowed for the team to play a style that optimizes the team’s personal for success, with the adoption of total hockey where every player is involved in the offense (even if it’s Cody Ceci).

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As the new high risk, high reward style is favorable for the Leafs dynamic offensive team, it does come with the deficiency of increasingly more odd-man rushes against.

Besides the poor goaltending, when the team has found themselves down in games it is sometimes because of the allowance of odd-man rushes against. These odd-man rushes are inherently bound to happen more often  with the new system put into place by Keefe.

Lately, the team has not been bailed out by Andersen, instead, they have been let down by Andersen making the style looking even worse than it ultimately should. (To be fair, the Toronto Maple Leafs get more shot-attempts, shots, scoring chances, dangerous scoring chances, goals and expected goals than their opponent does, under Keefe).

Sometimes the team will get burned because of this or sometimes they may get lucky, but if you have watched lately they have not got lucky in any shape or form.

What Exactly is the Deal With Odd-Man Rushes

With all of this talk about odd-man rushes, it would be a disservice not to further explore what makes rush chances so much more dangerous than regular chances.

For starters, the basic concept of rush chances is in the form of the opponent having more players on the attack than the defending team has. The most common forms of this include 1 on 0’s, 2 on 1’s and 3 on 2’s.

With the fact that the play is moving at a high speed and there is extra space that adds an element of unpredictability to the situation, rush chances tend to lead to significantly more goals than a typical in-zone shot.

For reference in Steve Shea and Christopher Baker’s Hockey Analytics book they found the following information in regards to rush chances: They account for less than 2% of all chances, but the chance of scoring on them is over double a normal shot.

These findings clearly suggest odd-man rushes are far more dangerous to give up than regular chances. Under Keefe, if the Toronto Maple Leafs are allowing for an abundance of odd-man rushes against this can be a legitimate problem as it has been of late.

If the Leafs are allowing for more than 5% of the chances against to be odd-man rushes, then the Leafs should consequently expect the opponent to translate on more of their chances since an odd-man rush is such a quality chance.

We hear the word transition ability not only in hockey but in other sports such as basketball where the concept of transition is, in general, the same, amounting to the player on the rush having a far larger expectation to convert on the chance.

This is why a player’s transition ability is becoming an increasingly more common discussion because the research states a possession entry leads to almost twice the amount of offense as a dump in does.

Outlook

As we have examined, the increasing number of odd-man rushes that have occurred since Keefe has come in as the head coach is a real issue.

The issue is mainly caused as a result of the new system put in place that prioritizes offense, however, plenty of the odd-man rushes can be masked if the forwards were covering for the defensemen.

After the game where the Leafs lost against the Chicago Blackhawks, Sheldon Keefe stated the players were “immature”.

This is going on a hunch but, I can see Keefe meaning “immature” as in, the forwards were not covering for the defensemen when they stepped up in the offense.

Moving forward, hopefully, the forwards will give their goaltender more of a chance to succeed and learn from their mistakes. However, other than the forwards covering more effectively for the defensemen, the Toronto Maple Leafs will have to continue to focus on outscoring the opposition with their ultra offensive lineup to make up for the odd-man rushes.