The Toronto Maple Leafs are not giving Nick Robertson a fair chance to perform right now.
Heading into the season, one of the most intriguing storylines for the Toronto Maple Leafs was Nick Robertson. WIll he or won’t he make an impact on the roster this year?
Although he made the team out of training camp, he was demoted strictly for salary cap reasons, and the when injuries struck, he was the first one promoted. He has appeared in six games and has two goals and four points. Compared to his previous two points (1G, 1A) in his first 16 career games, I’d say that Robertson is off to a great start with the team.
However, it doesn’t feel like the head coach feels that way.
In Toronto’s 3-2 overtime win against the Dallas Stars on October 20th, Robertson scored two goals and proved why he’s been such a highly-touted prospect. His skill was on full-display that evening and it was capped off by scoring the game-winning goal from a pass by Auston Matthews.
Although he can’t win the Calder Trophy this year, Robertson is still all but technically a rookie. Despite not scoring a goal since then, when he was playing top-six minutes, he looked like a top-six player.
Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Play Robertson
During his first three games where he had two goals and one assist, Robertson was averaging roughly 15 minutes of ice-time, however since then, it’s dropped to 8:00 TOI.
Things got even worse when Robertson was a healthy scratch on Wednesday night against the Philadelphia Flyers.
Personally, I’ve never been a huge fan of Robertson. I’ve wished him success, but I never thought he was going to just jump into the NHL and score 30 goals. However, my mindset shifted after watching him in preseason and the first few games of the regular season.
Robertson is not a bottom-six player and he doesn’t need to adjust his game to play there. The 20-year-old is a legit top-six forward right now and his offensive skillset should be enough to keep him in the line-up.
I know he’s small, but his shiftiness with the puck and shot are world-class. Besides Matthews, he probably has the best shot on the team and that’s important. We’ve seen the combination of Alex Kerfoot-John Tavares-William Nylander before and it’s fine, but it could be better with Robertson.
Robertson possesses a skillset that Kerfoot would dream of, but he can’t unleash it right now. As a result, playing him in the bottom-six or keeping in the press box is doing nothing for his development.
Keefe needs to figure his line-up out and get Robertson back in the top-six because it’ll only help the offense and make this team better as besides last game, they were lacking firepower.