Toronto Maple Leafs 2020 Player Grades for Goalies and Defensemen

The Toronto Maple Leafs will face off against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Sunday August 2nd to kick-off their best of five play-in series.

The Toronto Maple Leafs will try to make the playoffs proper by defeating a team that finished with the same amount of points as they did.

They will be going up against a team that eliminated the Tampa Bay Lightning from last year’s playoffs, so things should be pretty interesting, although I have no doubt that the Leafs will prevail.

The regular season wasn’t the best for the Leafs, but they did finish 8th overall from the day they switched coaches, which is pretty good for a constantly injured team, learning a new system and playing with one to five players out of the lineup every night.

As we gear up for the playoffs, we’ve been working on grading the team’s players, and last week we released the grades for the forwards.

Today we will do defense and goalies.

The Leafs blue-line takes a lot of heat, much of it unfair.  While no one was able to put together an award winning year this seasons, the Toronto Maple Leafs had quite a few strong performances.

Morgan Rielly

Rielly was coming off two straight seasons in which he was one of the only players in the NHL to play against top competition, post a positive possession rating and score over 50 points.

That’s a hard thing to do in the NHL, especially when you’re partnered with a 37 year old who is half a decade beyond being a good NHL player.

Rielly not only managed, but he succeeded.   This year, with the possibility of finally getting a peer for a partner, expectations were high.

Unfortunately, Mike Babcock saddled his best defenseman with Cody Ceci, and they did not fare well.

Babcock was fired and Rielly had a great stretch partnered with Tyson Barrie (extremely strong numbers together) but then Rielly was injured and missed 23 games.

He did appear to be trying to play through an injury all year, and he wasn’t as good as last year (leading to a lot of people improperly crediting Ron Hainsey with his success) but the Leafs did win 70% of the games that he played in with Keefe as the coach.

The three goals were disappointing, and he wasn’t on pace to match last year’s incredible 72 points, but Rielly was still the Leafs best defenseman when he played, and if we factor injuries and chaos into the mix, it’s hard to be too upset with his overall game.

Cody Ceci

Ceci was signed last summer when the Toronto Maple Leafs found themselves with a little bit of extra cap room.

Given that there was essentially no risk, they signed Ceci to see if maybe the right handed former first round pick could find his game on a better team.

He could not.

It was unfair of Babcock to try and make him a top-pairing player, but Ceci couldn’t handle the role.

With just one goal in 56 games, and eight points overall, Ceci contributed nothing offensively.

On deference he wasn’t much better.  Overall he was a negative impact player and did not return value on the contract the Leafs gave him.

The team relies on his for penalty killing, but there is no evidence that they should.   It should be an easy decision to replace Ceci with Sandin when the season starts again, but the Leafs may be reluctant to remove one of their only right shooting defensemen.

Jake Muzzin

Jake Muzzin played in only 53 of the Leafs 70 games this year, but when he played he was great.

For most of his career, Muzzin has been an underrated player. For nearly a decade he posted 40 point seasons while being among the best puck-possession players in the NHL.

A play driver who excels at both ends of the ice, Muzzin was the Leafs best defenseman this year scoring 23 points despite playing some very tough defensive minutes.

Partnered with Holl, Muzzin faced tough competition ever night, especially once Keefe took over and tried to pick Rielly’s spots a bit better.

Muzzin and Holl were an above average shut-down pair who could chip in some offense when needed.

For the second year in a row, Muzzin was worth over 2 wins.

The Toronto Maple Leafs rewaded Muzzin with a contract extension despite the fact that he is 31.  Though he can be physical, and though he’s necessary a slow player,  Muzzin’s value comes from intelligence, passing, and positioning, so he should be the kind of player who ages gracefully.

His contract is generally the kind I think teams should avoid if they can, but I am willing to make an exception for Muzzin because I think should avoid significant decline for a few years.

Tyson Barrie

For a guy who had 39 points in just 70 games and didn’t miss a game, Tyson Barrie sure took a lot of crap in his first season with the Leafs.

You might not know this, but in general, offensively gifted defenseman are not popular in Toronto.

Barrie started out horribly, but Mike Babcock was clearly not happy being given yet another non-physical, offense-first defenseman, and he played Barrie in a way that made that clear.

But from the time Keefe was hired to the end of the season, Barrie was 4th in the NHL in 5v5 scoring among defensemen.  He was a regular part of the 2nd best PP in the NHL.  (Would have been first if they didn’t go cold on that three-game western road trip that ended the season).

Barrie and Rielly were a revelation when paired together, as the Leafs scored 60% of the total goals when they did.

Obviously the coach has to deploy this pairing in specific situations (due to their defensive problems) but their ability to move the puck is unparalleled across the league, as literally no one else tries two such players together.

Overall, whenever the Leafs dressed Barrie, they were even or over 50% in Corsi, Shots, Goals, Expected Goals, Scoring Chances and Dangerous Scoring chances.

Say what you want, the Leafs were a better team than their opponent whenever Barrie was on the ice.  And that includes the terrible numbers he put up with Babcock as coach.

Justin Holl

The 28 year-old Holl dressed in just 11 games last season, and was not expected to contribute much this year.

Instead, he played in all but two games, became a fixture in the Toronto Maple Leafs top-four, and joined with Jake Muzzin to form a solid shut-down pairing.

Despite starting a lot in the defensive zone, Holl still managed a respectable 18 points, and the Leafs got 52% of the puck possession and shots while he was on the ice.

Despite being the only regular on the team to start less than 40% of his shifts in the offensive zone, the Leafs consistently won when he was on the ice.

Players do not typically make the NHL and become regulars at the age of 28, but that’s what Holl has done.  Should he manage to hold onto his job, he will be found money for the Leafs, and his $2 million dollar deal has the chance to be a huge steal.

There were almost 20 games where he didn’t have Muzzin, and many games in which the Leafs were down both their top two guys.  They play an offense-first style that doesn’t make their defenseman look very good at times, and despite all that, Holl put up solid numbers.

Travis Dermott

Travis Dermott is in a strange position.  He has been among the NHL’s very best third pairing defenseman over the last three years, but he also finds himself to be the 4th most important left-handed defenseman on his team.

The Leafs are the deepest team in the NHL at left-side defenseman with Muzzin, Rielly, Sandin, Dermott and the newly acquired Mikko Lehtenan.

Will the team dress five lefties?

In the past the Leafs have traded for lefties Muzzin and T.J Brodie when everyone “knew” they needed righties, so it doesn’t seem like something the Leafs will factor into their decision making.

The fact is that you’d generally be crazy to part with a 23 year old defenseman with the kind of success Dermott has had so far in his career.

The Leafs got 55% of the goals when Dermott was on the ice, and he was at 50% or above in all major percentage stats, while being worth 0.6 WAR.

That doesn’t sound like a lot, but its’ still better than 58% of other NHL defensemen.

Dermott was good this year, but I feel like he could have been better.  I did like his game late in the year when the Leafs blue line was decimated, however.