The Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Give Less Time to Legends

The Toronto Maple Leafs are a deep team with lots of options.  What they should do is create a rotation of players and keep these old guys fresh. But their optimal lineup, with everyone healthy should not feature Simmonds, Thornton, Spezza or Bogosian all dressed at once.  They should pick one player/assistant coach and let him play while the other three sit.  Two at most.

Nick Robertson should play on the left side of Matthews and Marner.  Alex Galchenyuk should stick with Nylander and Tavares, while the Leafs bottom six should feature two excellent defensive lines – one with Engvall, Hyman and Mikheyev, and another with Foligno, Nash and Kerfoot.

There is no reason that that couldn’t be the best bottom-six in the NHL.  The Leafs could have two stifling defensive lines that can also score.  This would give the Leafs a perfect mix of two scoring lines and two defending lines.  They could play both bottom lines evenly, and not treat either as a traditional “fourth” line.  Then, at certain times, you sit Gally and Robertson and move Hyman and Foligno up.

Another option would be to use Foligno and Hyman on the top two lines, then create an offensive fourth line out of Robertson-Spezza-Galchenyuk, while using Nash-Engvall-Mikheyev as the primary shut-down line.

Both options are good, and neither one includes Simmonds or Thornton.  The Leafs added two elite defenders at the deadline for a reason, and so Nash and Foligno are going to necessitate taking two players out of the lineup.

I suspect those two players will ultimately be Pierre Engvall and Nick Robertson, but that is a mistake.  Engvall is a much better player than he gets credit for, and taking him out of the lineup wipes out a lot of the gains made by adding Nash/Foligno.  Robertson, has got that upside that I think you have to have…if he doesn’t cut it, it’s easy enough to replace him, but I like having that potential breakout player that you just don’t otherwise have.

On Defense the situation couldn’t be more clear: Rasmus Sandin is closer to being a #1 than a #7 at this point, and has to play. Dermott is too good to sit.  The bottom line is that Simmonds, Bogosian and Thornton need to have their minutes cut back, and maybe even exit the lineup all-together.