Toronto Maple Leafs: 1 Game of John Klingberg in the Top-4 Is Too Many

The Toronto Maple Leafs got off to a fantastic start to the season Wednesday against the Montreal Canadiens.

Though the Toronto Maple Leafs had to make a dramatic come-from-behind victory, they played a strong overall game and the score was fairly complimentary to the Canadiens.

I don’t think we have to worry about two goals per game going in the net after a defenseman randomly falls or flubs the pucks.

Overall, Ilya Samsonov was terrible, and there were a couple of rough spots in the lineup.

Toronto Maple Leafs Lineup Suggestions for Saturday

The second game of a three-game home-stand that the Leafs have to start the season is Saturday against the Minnesota Wild.

Although you hate to make drastic changes after a single game, I think at least one change is in order.

I’m all for giving people time to get settled in, but some things are just obvious.

First, Samsonov was terrible and while the Leafs should give Joseph Woll every opportunity to start 30-40 games himself, I think it’s important to get him back out there right away.  If he struggles again, give Woll the next two games, but you don’t want him (Samsonov) to have to live with that game for a full week.

The most important change has to come from the second pairing.

John Klingberg was great on the power-play to open the season.  The same cannot be said about his 5v5 play which was pretty much as expected (read: garbage).

If Klingberg was bad, Jake McCabe was even worse.  The only time the Canadiens had any kind of sustained pressure was when these two were on the ice.

For 14 minutes they played together and the Leafs had the puck just 36% of the time.  During this time, the Canadiens outshot the Leafs 9-6, had 7 scoring chances to the Leafs 2, and outscored the Leafs 2-0.

The expected goals when Klingberg and McCabe were together were  74% in Montreal’s favor.

That is just not good.  Things got even worse when those two were joined by the Domi/Tavares/Nylander line, and the Leafs can’t be creating situations where their $23 million dollar second line is useless.

At 5v5, McCabe and Klingberg played just one minute less than team-leader Morgan Rielly and were the Leafs second and third most used defenseman at 5v5.

Sheldon Keefe has got to be better than that.

So a change is in order, and it’s easy to do.

Every informed analysist said the same thing when the Toronto Maple Leafs signed John Klingberg: great on the power-play, but the Leafs won’t be able to get away with using him in the top four.

It took one game to make that crystal-clear.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have another problem, and it’s related: Timothy Liljegren is way too good to be stuck on the third pairing.  That one glaring mistake aside, he had a decent enough game on Wednesday.

In 14 minutes, to nobody’s surprise, the Leafs dominated his minutes.

Keefe simply has to switch Liljegren and Klingberg and see what happens.  Of course, the risk here is that Klingberg and Giordano are no better, but at least they don’t have to skate for 18 minutes and can play sheltered minutes on the third pairing. (all stats naturalstattrick.com).

I realize it’s only one game, but Klingberg isn’t going to improve against top competition.  If the Toronto Maple Leafs want to take advantage of his power-play skills they have to hide him better at even-strength.

The Leafs blue-line is already bad, they can’t go around making it worse on purpose, and so they cannot play John Klingberg in the top 4.