Toronto Maple Leafs Now Have 1/3rd of Last Year’s Duck’s Blueline

The Toronto Maple Leafs have chosen an interesting new strategy: replicate the worst blue-line in the NHL.

That’s right folks, with the signing of Simon Benoit to a one-year deal, the Toronto Maple Leafs now have an entire third of the Anaheim Might Ducks blue-line from last year.

For those keeping track at home, that’s the 32 ranked Might Ducks.

Go Leafs!

The Toronto Maple Leafs Bold New Strategy

Replicating the NHL’s worst blue-line is an interesting choice.

The Ducks were not only the NHL’s worst team last year, but they were last in puck-possession, shots-for, and expected-goals.

They got a bit lucky and only finished 31st in goals-for percentage.

If you’re wondering which team in the NHL had the lowest percentage of scoring chances or dangerous scoring chances over the 82 games season, I bet you could guess.

Still unsure?

It was the Ducks!

This legendary ensemble featured (in order of most games played) Cam Fowler, Simon Benoit, Kevin Shattenkirk, Dmitri Kulikov, and Nathan Beaulieu, and John Klingberg.

The Toronto Maple Leafs now have one-third of this classic lineup.

For perspective, the Ducks themselves have chosen to bring back just one of those players.

Or, another way to say that is: One less player than the Leafs!

Benoit looks like he’ll fit in on the Leafs due to their complete lack of physicality on the backend, but his statistics do leave a lot top be desired.  At least no one can call him “one dimensional”……. because he stinks in three dimensions – at least according to last seasons statistics.

With no offense to speak of, Benoit is also adept at providing terrible defense.

The Toronto maple Leafs now have not one, but two of the worst players in the NHL from 2023 on their roster.

Now, to be fair, the Ducks were collectively terrible and all players would look bad on their team.   And Benoit is signed to be about 8th on the depth chart and likely won’t ever play for the Toronto Maple Leafs unless there are multiple injuries.

The role for Benoit is likely  what Jordie Benn and Victor Mete played last year – which is to be available when and if the team’s health gets decimated. (naturalstattrick.com).

The problem with this signing isn’t that Benoit is a bad player (he is) or that the Leafs are over the cap (they are) or that they didn’t need him (they don’t) it’s that, once again, they have signed a depth player that will block any of their prospects from getting some much needed experience.

We know that any bottom of the lineup NHL player isn’t much different from any random AHL player, so it’s just bad strategy to keep preventing your players from getting experience.

If the Leafs get hit with injuries, having Benoit to use instead of being forced to call up Topi Niemela or Mikko Kokkonen isn’t going to save the season.  In fact, choosing the guy with absolutely no upside would hurt the team.

This signing is a lot like the movie Law Abiding Citizen in that it seems fine for about an hour, then once you start thinking about it, you’re like – what the hell are they even doing?

One third of the 2023-24 Ducks’ Blue-Line?  Allllllllllllllllrighty then.