Toronto Maple Leafs: Sheldon Keefe’s Comments Out of Line

The Toronto Maple Leafs coach has recently made some lineup decisions that are less than ideal.

For example, Toronto Maple Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe healthy scratched Timothy Liljegren, arguably the team’s best statistical defenseman over the past two years, when the team acquired several new defenders at the trade deadline.

Despite winning 60% of his minutes over a two-year sample, Liljegren was healthy scratched, and has looked lost and confused at times since rejoining the team. This is likely because he was very confused about how such a consistently good performance wasn’t good enough for his coach, and subsequently suffered a crisis of confidence.

It is impossible for me to believe that a team as analytically driven as the Toronto Maple Leafs would the decision to remove Liljegren from the lineup rather than promoting him.  Especially after sitting him last year in the playoffs and losing by a single goal.

But Keefe wasn’t done with the horrible moves, as yesterday he publicly called out one of the best players in franchise history for his own mistakes.

Toronto Maple Leafs Coach Makes a Fool Out of Himself

William Nylander has 79 points and 35 goals in 69 games, and is on the verge of a 40 goal season. He is 18th in points, 16th in goals, along with an elite 54% xGoals and 60% actual goals.

Nylander doesn’t have any points in his last three games, and his coach said this about him yesterday:

https://twitter.com/koshtorontosun/status/1637871497443172354

However, in the last game, the coach skated Nylander with Sam Lafferty and a rookie, so he should probably take the blame on himself instead of publicly embarrassing one of the main reasons he’s still employed.

Recently, Sheldon Keefe stopped playing Nylander with Auston Matthews (and the Kerfoot/Jarnkrok combo has been great, so that in itself is fine) and played him for 30 5v5 minutes with Sam Lafferty.

Together they posted a 33% puck-possession rating, while getting only 40% of the shots, while allowing double the scoring chances they themselves had, for an expected goals rating of 36%.

I realize Keefe would like Nylander to drive a line on his own, but considering his overall excellent level of play, I just don’t see how embarrassing him is the right (let alone honorable) move here, especially when his very recent, and likely temporary, decline coincides with playing him with the player who has the worst stats of any player the Leafs have used all year. (stats naturalstattrick.com).

If Nylander struggles while playing with Matthews or Tavares, call him out.  When he struggles do to your experiments you should own the loss and cut the guy some slack.