What the Toronto Maple Leafs Playoff Lineup Should Look Like
The Toronto Maple Leafs have all-but-mathematically clinched a playoff spot. While I guess it is technically possible that the Leafs could go on a six game losing streak to finish the year, it’s virtually impossible for Vancouver to win enough games to make it happen.
The Toronto Maple Leafs most likely scenario is an opening round match-up vs the Montreal Canadiens. The Leafs and Canadiens haven’t met in a playoff series since 1979, a year so far in the past that the songs romanticizing it are now considered retro.
Assuming the Leafs and Canadiens meet up as planned, this is probably the worst of the possible first round opponents the Leafs could get. Don’t get me wrong – they will be heavy, heavy favorites, but for a team coming off one of the worst examples of “getting goalied” in NHL history, Carey Price isn’t exactly the guy you want to face.
Now is it possible that Carey Price is the most overrated player in the history of the NHL? I won’t answer until round two. Price aside, Montreal makes for an interesting matchup, as they are statistically a very good team and one could say they are the second-best in the Canadian Division.
My personal view is that elite players trump all else, and therefore Montreal’s inability to match their great team stats with actual results is predictable. The Habs may have a very good top-to-bottom lineup, but until they augment it with at least one top ten player, they aren’t going to be anything better than a bubble team. (All stats for this article will be from naturalstattrick.com and be 5v5 unless otherwise noted).
It’s all well and good to think about the team they’ll have to play, but the real question for today is what lineup should the extremely deep Toronto Maple Leafs team use in the playoffs? The options are unlimited, and given the quality of the team, there is no real wrong answer, but here’s my two cents.’
Hyman- Matthews – Marner
Zach Hyman is injured, but when he’s back he should play on the top line with Matthews and Marner.
While I do like the Hyman-Engvall-Mikheyev line, at the end of the day you’ve got to focus your best players on to the top lines and make sure you win where it counts. The Leafs are a deep team with a lot of great players, but Hyman-Matthews-Marner is probably the NHL’s best line.
The Leafs are winning 24-10 in goals when Hyman and Matthews are together. The sample size of them playing together is large, and they dominate. Matthew has played about half the year with Hyman and half the year with someone else on the left side. With anyone else, the Leafs have gotten a very strong 54% of the goals, but with Hyman it’s 70%.
And while no one is likely to score 70% of the total goals over the long term, the Hyman-Matthews combo has played at a 62% expected-goals percentage, meaning that despite the obvious good luck that is necessary to outscore opponents 24-10, they are still doing amazingly well together.
I will cut Foligno some slack for having to switch teams and quarantine, which means that his first two games were essentially meaningless when it comes to telling us where he should play, and since they paid so much to acquire him the temptation to play him on the top line may be great.
But we don’t actually need to know anything about Foligno. We know enough about Hyman. He has proven all skeptics wrong and somehow turned himself into something at least approximating an elite player. He needs to be on the first line.
Foligno- Tavares- Nylander
While I am a full fledged supporter of Alexander Galchenyuk and would completely support playing him here, I think the Toronto Maple Leafs should just copy the exact same format as line one, so that they can relentlessly skate and forcheck teams into the ground.
When Foligno was acquired, much was made about how he was one of the best puck retrievers in the game. I saw a chart, which I can no longer find, that showed him to be just below Zach Hyman in a list of the games best forecheckers. Just behind Foligno? William Nylander.
A Foligno-Nylander combo should be a forechecking puck-retrieval machine. With the top line taking all the hardest minutes already, the Leafs second line has been completely dominant no matter who they use, but Foligno gives them a chance to be even better.
With Nylander and Tavares both on the ice, the Leafs are outscoring opponents by a score of 18-10, which is 64% and nearly as good as Matthews/Hyman. To have two first lines just dominating whoever the top six of their opponents is makes the Leafs nearly unbeatable.
Ironically, given Tavares and Nylander’s reputations as finesse players, but this line actually brings a ton of grit and checking ability. Few players are better at finding room in the tough areas around the net as Tavares, while Foligno is the human embodiment of what people mean when they say “playoff hockey.”
As for Nylander, he is not only one of the NHL’s best forecheckers, he’s one of the NHL’s best players when it comes to carrying the puck through the neutral zone and getting a controlled entry. On top of this, he is an elite scorer who’s 35 points in 43 games is actually pretty incredible when you put them in context (Tavares slump, low on-ice shooting percentage, 2nd PP unit).
This is, in my opinion, a no-brainer top-six, but how should the bottom-six look?
Kerfoot-Nash-Mikheyev
Sheldon Keefe has shown us all season long (note the protracted Hyman on line three experiments) that he wants a shut-down line he can use when needed.
I am a little skeptical about such things because I think the best defense is having the puck, and defensive specialists tend to not have the puck. I think if you have to face Connor McDavid in a series, that you are much better forcing him to beat Matthews and Marner and Hyman than you are trying to contain him with a dedicated team of checkers.
But, be that as it may, the coach wants a checking line, and a checking line he shall have. In my opinion Kerfoot-Nash-Mikheyev is the best the Leafs can do here while keeping Hyman and Foligno up top.
Mikheyev is a speedy player who gets off a ton of shots and eventually should get some scoring luck. I like him a lot, and think it might actually be impossible not to. Nash is a defensive specialist, and while he will have to enter the playoffs having never played for the Leafs, I don’t think that’s too big of a deal, since it’s not like the Leafs are reinventing the wheel when it comes to defensive hockey. If for whatever reason Nash doesn’t play, Pierre Engvall is a perfectly good substitution on this line.
If the Leafs did task this line with trying to stop McDavid, I think they could rest assured that this group will do a better job shutting him down than the Oilers checking line will do against Matthews and Hyman.
Kerfoot and Nash are both elite defensively and this line has just enough speed and talent score a few.
Jason Spezza and No Strong Opinions
The Toronto Maple Leafs have an incredibly deep roster than will allow them to experiment with their fourth line as much as they want. Outside of Jason Spezza, who has earned the right to play in every game, any combination of players the Leafs use on their fourth line will be fine.
Ultimately, there isn’t really that much of a difference between any fourth liners, so I’d just go with the guys who have the highest ceiling because they can potentially help you a lot more than any risk you take by using them.
If I had to choose, I’d make the fourth line Galchenhyuk-Spezza- Robertson and I’d give them easy minutes and tell them to go nuts……but realistically this isn’t a combination we’ll likely ever see.
Realistically, the Leafs could use anyone they have in this role and be all right. At worst, Thornton and Simmonds, Petan and Engvall are all better than your average NHL 4th line player.
Spezza has earned a spot in every game regardless of anything, and as far as I’m concerned, they can mix and match to their hearts content with the other 10 guys.
Here are their options: Galchenyuk, Robertson, Thornton, Simmonds, Brooks, Engvall, Petan, Kenny Agostino, Antti Suomela or Joey Anderson.
I know next to nothing about Suomela, but nine forwards would have to get hurt before he plays, and the odds are he’d be totally fine on the fourth line for ten minutes in a game.
The reason that I would be perfectly fine with a Petan-Brooks-Suomela combo, if I had to be, is that the NHL is a pro league where the margins between players are so small that when it comes to the edges of rosters, there is hardly any difference.
I think the best thing they could do is let Galchenyuk and Robertson take turns, while letting Thornton and Simmonds take turns. My guess for what they will actually do is Thornton-Spezza-Simmonds
Defense and Goalies
The Toronto Maple Leafs should stick with the defensive pairings they used the other night in their victory against the Jets. That is Rielly/Brodie, Muzzin/Holl, and Sandin/Dermott.
Zach Bogosian is injured, but he should be the seventh defenseman when returns, even though the Leafs will likely make the mistake of sitting Dermott instead. I wrote all about it here, so I won’t go into it too much now, other than to say that Sandin is obviously too good to be sitting on the bench, and you’re not going to lose games because of who you choose out of Bogosian or Dermott.
The goalie thing is a bit more complicated.
Hockey is a game that involves people with feelings who make subjective decisions, so any time you take away the job a beloved star player has held for years, there are going to be problems. So in this situation, you’d think Jack Campbell would have to be quite a bit better than Andersen to make it worth switching.
Campbell has been great this year and given the general unpredictability of goalies, I don’t see how you can argue against playing someone who has been so hot.
But who knows?
All I know is that Andersen hasn’t inspired confidence in a long time, and that hockey is a sport where success, in what is by far the most important position (goalie), relies as much on the psychological as it is does the physical.
Campbell has played, Andersen hasn’t. Campbell has played well, Andersen hasn’t. Those are facts. My subjective perception is that the team will rally around and believe in Campbell in a way they won’t with Andersen. Who knows if that is true, but I just feel like Campbell is like this great story because he’s such a great guy who is finally able to harness his talent and live up to his potential.
Next. Does a Healthy Leafs Team Have Any Use for Thornton and Simmonds?. dark
Therefore they should play Jack Campbell in net for every game of the playoffs even if Andersen is 100% healthy.