Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Bench Cody Ceci When Play Resumes

The Toronto Maple Leafs are going to have some tough lineup decisions to make when play resumes.

Always assuming that actually happens, the Toronto Maple Leafs will take on the Columbus Blue Jackets sometime when the weather hits 30 degrees.

And when that happens, the Leafs will be almost fully healthy (Andreas Johnsson being the exception) which means they will have to make some decisions on the defense.

It will be easy to go with the veterans, and that is what most teams would probably do.  But the Leafs are not most teams, and I don’t think they value experience over talent.

Toronto Maple Leafs Blue Line

The other day I wrote that the Leafs should play Rasmus Sandin when the NHL resumes.  Today I want to focus on the inverse of that idea – not playing Cody Ceci.

It would be a massive error to play Ceci over Sandin.  The reason you would do so is experience, handedness, and penalty killing.

But here is the thing: In the NHL, if you aren’t elite, you barely have an effect on the game.

One way to make a non-elite player have a negative effect on a game would be to pair him on the top line with Morgan Rielly.  Mike Babcock did it, and he no longer has a job.

It was stupid then, and it’s stupid now.  Holl and Muzzin make a VERY good shut-down pair, and this allows you to shelter Rielly and use him in the best situations, but it still doesn’t warrant giving Ceci 20 minutes per game.

Given their success together, it should be a no-brainer to pair Rielly with Barrie.  They scored almost 60% of the total goals while paired, and had an expected goals rating of 55%.  That’s elite.

If Muzzin and Holl take the defensive zone starts, Barrie and Rielly can pick apart teams with an unprecedented level of offensive talent on a single line.

No amount of experience is going to change this calculus.  At best we are talking about a 3rd pairing role for Ceci, and given his contributions to the PK, this might seem ideal.

However, Sandin has game-breaking talent.  Sitting him out when he could end up being the difference would be a mistake.  Best case scenario with Ceci is he does OK on the third pairing (even if he’s the worst in the NHL, which he isn’t, he isn’t going to hurt the team from this spot) but why play for such mediocrity? Why not take a risk to get an edge?

Sandin is better than Ceci, and the only part of the game where this isn’t true is on the PK where it really doesn’t matter.  You are going to allow a goal every five penalties unless your goalie is awesome.

No one should make lineup decisions based on special teams.

There are tons of reasons to play Sandin.   There isn’t a single good one to play Ceci.