The Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Give Less Time to Legends

Deploying the Legends

True to form, Sheldon Keefe has relied way too much on his aged legends.  Joe Thornton, Wayne Simmonds and Zach Bogosian are nice guys, it’s cool to have them on the team, and they’re doing fine, but the problem is that they play at the expense of better players, and in situations they should not play.

If Joe Thornton was anyone else, he would be given a restraining order to stay 200 feet away from the Leafs power-play at all times.

If the Leafs had of given 100% of Bogosian’s ice time to Mikko Lehtenon they’d be a better team today.  Bogosian to date has been better than only 50% of NHL defenseman.  That is not very good.  He the epitome of average, and he’s been somewhat reliable but Lehtenon brought an upside that he just doesn’t have.  Same goes for Rasmus Sandin.

Travis Dermott, on the other hand, is an elite defensive player who is better at defense than 89% of NHL dmen.  Overall, he’s better than 79% of NHL defenders.

Joe Thornton – his beard is gross, but he’s a cool guy who is hilarious in press conferences.  He is valuable to the team because I am 100% certain that people like having him around.  Still, he shouldn’t play nearly as much as he does.  He’s only better than 40%  of NHL forwards and that isn’t good enough to be on this team. (All references to player percentiles from @Jfresh Player Cards).

He gets the sixth most power-play ice-time per game……how is that working out? Poorly. Big Joe is ranked 11th on the team in PP scoring per minute and has just four assists  total.  Sheldon Keefe has to be better.

Wayne Simmonds….has actually been surprisingly effective this year, at 5v5 at least.  Though he’s had much easier minutes, I don’t actually mind wherever they put him in the lineup, he’s a pretty good fourth liner at this point…..but he is garbage on the power-play, his former specialty.

Seventh on the team by average TOI, Simmonds has just 3 PP goals and is ranked 12th in points per minute, and he shouldn’t see another second of PP ice time going forward.  Both players are fine, and they aren’t exactly hurting the team at 5v5, but the Leafs could ice better lineups without either player.

And I just want to make it clear here that I like all four of the players I’m talking about in this article (Spezza, Bogosian, Thornton, Simmonds) and that it’s cool that they are on the team.  I just don’t think they should be regular players who play every night.  It isn’t that they are bad, it’s that they lack the upside that more talented, less established players bring to the table.