The Toronto Maple Leafs Must Not Play Cody Ceci In the Playoffs

The Toronto Maple Leafs are set to open training camp on Tuesday.

When the Toronto Maple Leafs open training camp, all eyes are going to be on Auston Matthews to see if he is ready to play.

But other than the health of the team’s best players and the NHL’s second best player, the focus in camp is going to be on two things.

One will be on whether or not the team’s top prospect will be ready to play in the NHL, but the other, far more pressing concern will be Cody Ceci.

As in, will the Toronto Maple Leafs do the right thing and bench Ceci in favor of Rasmus Sandin?

Toronto Maple Leafs Training Camp

I’ve wrote before about Cody Ceci, and how the Leafs should definitely use Rasmus Sandin in his place, but today we’ll look at just how bad Ceci actually is.

One thing that got Mike Babcock fired was trying to use Ceci on the top pairing.  It was a disaster and really, the only thing I can criticize Sheldon Keefe at all for in his time as coach so far is trying it again, as he did in the game Rielly returned from injury before the season was cancelled.

This is not something the Leafs should be doing, but considering their lack of size and right handers on their blue line, unfortunately it is something we might, unfortunately, see.

When Ceci played this year, the Leafs only got 48% of the shots, and only got 49% of the goals.  The rest of his stats, however, were above 50%,   so overall, not too bad.  (stats naturalstattrick.com).

The problems with Ceci come if we look deeper into the numbers.   According to the @jfresh players cards (subscription is only $5 per month) which use stats from evolvinghockey.com. Cody Ceci is a terrible player.

Ceci comes in with a WAR of negative value, meaning that you could replace him with any reasonable player and expect better results.

The Leafs have two such players – Timothy Liljegren and Rasmus Sandin – both of whom should get a shot over Ceci.

Ceci’s chart shows that he is worse offensively than 75% of players, and worse defensively than half the league.   His PK and PP numbers are terrible too.

The fact is, the Leafs should be the last team that gets caught in the trap of overrating players due to their size and supposed defensive abilities.

If the Leafs have to play Ceci, it should be due to injuries only.

The Leafs depth chart should look like this: Rielly, Muzzin,  Barrie, Dermott, Sandin, Holl, Marincin, Liljegren, then Cody Ceci. They’ve got obviously better players, and it’s time to use them.