3 Ways to Turn the Toronto Maple Leafs into Real Cup Contenders

The Toronto Maple Leafs have used up all of their fan’s goodwill by failing to grow from tenacious up-and-comer into the indisputable contender they were promised when the team signed John Tavares to supplement Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner.

The 1-2 punch down the middle was supposed to make the Toronto Maple Leafs into the NHL’s best team, and while they’ve shown glimpses of this possibility for what now seems like years, they’ve so fair failed to deliver when it counts.

Now personally, I happen to think that we make way too much of a tiny sample size.  The Leafs, under Sheldon Keefe, have, more or less, always been one of the top teams in the NHL.

The Columbus Series was a five gamer played six months after the league shut down, and in it, the Blue Jackets set an NHL modern day save percentage record.

The Montreal series featured the absence of John Tavares and Auston Matthews ability to shoot the puck.  Any reasonable person should be able to refrain from judging the team too harshly for these results, but most reasonable would cheer for another team, so there’s a bit of a catch 22 going on here.

Fair or not, this current team has taken a combined whipping from disgruntled Leafs fans upset about 54 years of failure and a pandemic that has taxed everyone’s patience.

So where do we go from here? What follows are three things that I think could put the Leafs over the top.  Three things I think will have to happen to make them into a team that other teams don’t want to play, and a team that is respected as a legitimate Stanley Cup threat.

The team as currently made up could get it done. They probably won’t.  All contending teams make moves to augment themselves for the playoffs, and so, here are three things the Leafs should focus on for the rest of this season in order to enter the playoffs as a top contender.

Toronto Maple Leafs Need the Right Kind of Grit

One problem with the Toronto Maple Leafs is that when they attempted to transform from their run-and-gun reputation into a puck-possession powerhouse is that they lost their identity.

During this transition they noticeably tried to add more grit to their roster.  They brought in, among others, Wayne Simmonds, Zach Bogosian, Nick Foligno, and Nick Ritchie.

The problem here is that these are role players who don’t really have any impact on the game.

Now, the problem with the NHL is that physical  players who can also legitimately warrant top-of-the-lineup ice-time are basically unicorns.  Aaron Ekblad, Gabriel Landeskog, Matthew Tkachuk and his brother Brady, Brad Marchand etc.   These are extremely rare players.

The L:eafs will only ever be superficially physical until they have a core player who can take on such a  role.

The salary cap makes doing this difficult, but the fact is, the Leafs can use some combo of Kerfoot, Holl, Ritchie and maybe even Muzzin or Brodie to clear the space to make this happen.  They’ve then got to use a top prospect and some draft picks and get it done.

Michael Bunting is more of a sparkplug, and Nick Ritchie isn’t a top-six player, but they’ve obviously got the right idea here.  I think a top-six player with destructive qualities is a must, and a defenseman who can play in the top four and actually knock guys out of the crease is as well.

Relentless Offense

Though I by no means claim to be even well-versed on the topic, one thing I’ve always enjoyed reading about hockey strategy.

Strategy is one of the most interesting things about any game, and sometimes I think that the Toronto Maple Leafs strategy is all wrong for their team.  The Leafs believe in puck possession over everything else, and this is a smart strategy because puck-possession is the common denominator for winning hockey games.   Over time, the team that has the puck the most is the most likely team to win.

The Leafs know this and they play in a way that leads to puck possession – short  passes to get up the ice, and a tendency to hold the puck and try for a better chance, rather than to just take any shot and hope for the best.

I think this is a generally sound strategy, but that it underuses the Leafs best feature, which is their offensive talent. Most teams don’t have a version of Marner, Nylander, Matthews and Tavares.

Without exception, everyone on the Leafs blue-line is an above-average puck mover for their role and lineup spot.  The forwards feature four superstars, and they have the option of using Ondrej Kase, Josh Ho-Sang and Nick Robertson to increase the offense.

With this group of players, the Leafs should be able to skate other teams into the ground with their relentless offense.  Instead, they play a fairly safe game that almost never gets them breakaways or odd-man rushes.

Given the makeup of their team, I believe this is a strategic mistake.  I don’t think they should abandon their puck-possession bread and butter, but I do think that they should alter it a bit to account for their shooting talent.

Even on the power-play, I see them consistently waste chances for an odd-man rush in order to patiently set up their system.  Whenever the PK has a player deep, the Leafs tend to forgo  a long pass to create an odd-man situation in favor of setting up patiently.  (At least, this is my observation, and it is entirely possible this is confirmation bias and that the stats wouldn’t back this up, though I would they would).

I do think the Leafs, as made up today, are one of the NHL’s best teams.  But if they want to make up the gap between them and the Lightning and Avalanche, they should play to their strengths, as well as focus on developing a star prospect and acquiring some non-superficial physicality.

Also, that and immediately promote Josh Ho-Sang to the NHL.