7 Reasons Why the Toronto Maple Leafs Are In Big Trouble

Here Is Why the Toronto Maple Leafs Are In Big Trouble

1. The Blue-Line. 

A little known fact is that Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner are posting MVP-type numbers when Morgan Rielly is on the ice, and they are posting career worst numbers when he’s not. (all stats naturalstattrick.com).

This is because the rest of the Toronto Maple Leafs blue-line is horrendous, outside of the injured Liljegren and the apparently ageless Rielly.

The Leafs entered the season with five out of six players being over 30, and without any kind of depth or physical presence whatsoever.  I talked about this a lot, but most of the media was stuck on the fact that they were returning most of the same guys who’d been very successful in the past.

Timothy Liljegren is injured long-term, which hurts because he’s the only good player they have outside of Rielly.

McCabe, Giordano and Brodie are all declining before our eyes and all of them play too high up in the lineup.

While the Leafs should be able to outscore much of their problems, when the blue-line can’t move the puck well enough for Matthews and Marner to succeed, the problem might be bigger than it appears.

Basically through injury or decline, the entire blue-line is imploding.

And one more thing about the blue-line – it’s not the injuries.  A healthy blue-line of Rielly/Brodie McCabe/Liljegren Giordano/Klingberg still very much sucks.

With Liljegren out, the Leafs have one above average NHL defenseman, and that is ridiculous.