The Toronto Maple Leafs Should Not Play Riley Nash

The Toronto Maple Leafs should, under no circumstances, play Riley Nash when he comes off the injured reserve. Not, at least, until someone else is injured.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are about to play the Montreal Canadiens in a best of seven series that starts next Thursday and speculation about their lineup is running rampant.

Back at the trade deadline, the Leafs acquired Riley Nash to bolster their depth. Nash brings absolutely no offense to the table, but is one of the best fourth line centres in the NHL, because he is excellent at defense.

Doesn’t matter. He shouldn’t play.

Toronto Maple Leafs and Riley Nash

In the NHL there really isn’t that much of a difference between non-elite players.  If we are talking about the difference between Pierre Engvall and Riley Nash, it’s probably smaller than usual.

Sure, Nash is great defensively, but if you never, ever score, you don’t leave a lot of room for error. Engvall is a great defensive player, and he really excelled on a line with Hyman and Mikheyev earlier in the year. Plus, he scores a little bit, at least.

The Leafs top two lines are great with or without Hyman, but the third line is only great with him.  Therefore, Hyman should re-enter the lineup and play with Engvall and Hyman to make a great third line.

You cannot play Riley Nash on a third line – he’s a fourth liner, through and through. In the NHL I don’t think a third line with no offense is going to get you very far. It’s not like Engvall is a scoring machine, but his scoring this year projects top 15 or so goals and 25 or so points over a full season, and if you put him with Hyman and Mikheyev, there should be enough offense to get the job done.

The difference in defense between Engvall and Nash is probably made up by Engvall’s offense, but even if it isn’t, there is the fact that to play Nash the Leafs have to insert a player into their lineup who has never played in their system and who is rusty after having not played in over six weeks.

I guarantee you that Nash is not such a superior defensive player over Engvall that he can overcome the difference in offense, recovering from injury, being rusty and learning a new team’s system and be the better player.  It’s preposterous to even think that.

Beyond that, you’re going to take out a regular player who earned his job and is one of the coaches favorites? I just don’t see it. Pierre Engval deserves to play.

As an added bonus, using Engval with Hyman and Mikheyev allows the Leafs to keep Galchenyuk in the lineup on line two, while putting Kerfoot on the fourth line, where his speed will be a welcome relief to the painfully slow Thornton, Simmonds, Spezza line.

When Nash is healthy the Leafs can choose between Thornton, Nash and Simmonds for the final spot.  That gives them their best chance to win.