Toronto Maple Leafs: 4 Questions for Sheldon Keefe In Training Camp
By Oliver Smith
Who Plays with the Toronto Maple Leafs Best Player?
The teaser for this slide could have been “Who Plays with No.34 & No. 16” since Matthews and Mitch Marner were virtually inseparable last season. However the reason for leaving Marner out of the initial question is important.
Mitch Marner is an elite NHL player, there is no way around that point. Auston Matthews is a generational NHL player and one of the purest goal scorers the game has seen.
The two combined exceptionally well in the regular season but failed to spark in the playoffs and part of that came down to how much Keefe played the two together. When it wasn’t working, with Tavaers injured, there was little in the Plan B column for Keefe to use.
Matthews and Marner are so good they can play on any line and make it better, but when Keefe needed another option against the Habs, his reluctance to play them apart during the regular season cost him.
Keefe needs to use training camp to find viable alternatives to a Matthews-Marner tandum. Whether that means reuniting Marner and John Tavares, who played very very well together, or Matthews and Nylander, who showed flashes of excellence as well, there needs to be some movement.
Keefe may be loathe to change up the Nylander-Tavares combination since that came alive towards the end of the season but he needs to find something else. This is all before there is any discussion about whether it should be Michael Bunting, Nick Ritchie or perhaps a wild card like Ilya Mikheyev, Nick Robertson or Josh Ho-Sang on Matthews left side (for the record, it should start with Ritchie).