A Deep Dive Into How the Toronto Maple Leafs Top-Pairing Did Without Rielly

The Toronto Maple Leafs are perfect since Morgan Rielly was suspended.

Though they did play the Blues twice, and the Flyers and Ducks once each, so it's not like they ran a gauntlet or anything.

Still, the Toronto Maple Leafs should be proud of their performance without their blue-line's best player.

One good thing that came out of the suspension was Timothy Liljegren being moved up to the top pairing with TJ Brodie, who played the left side.

As the following staistical analysis will show, Liljegren performed very well when moved to the top of the lineup. Previously, he has succeeded in a third-pairing role, but the Toronto Maple Leafs coach, Sheldon Keefe, has never trusted him for more.

It will be interesting to see how that changes going forward.

The emergence of Liljegren as a possible top-four defenseman would be a massive gain for the Leafs, whose blue-line is extremely bad compared to other top teams.

Therefore, let's break down the four games and see how he did.

Game 1 vs St. Louis

The Toronto Maple Leafs had one of their best games against the St. Louis Blues in the first of two meetings this past week. The Leafs won 4-1 despite dressing an improbably bad blue-line - at least on paper.

What actually transpired was nothing like anyone expected.

The Leafs new top pairing was very good in their first game together. Brodie played over 20 5v5 minutes, while Liljegren played 18. (stats naturalstattrick.com)l.

With Liljegren on the ice, the Leafs had 58% puck-possession and 60% of the shots.

Goals were even, scoring chances were 57% in the Leafs favor, and his Expected Goals rating was 67%.

He finished the game with one shot, no points, and 37 seconds of PP time, but no PK time.

Overall, this was a fabulous game for Timothy Liljegren. This is a player who has been scratched in each of the last two playoff seasons, despite putting up numbers that are extremely good for a 3rd pairing NHL defenseman.

This is a guy who has been, even recently, passed over, demoted and treated like the coach doesn't trust him.

And about seven years after being drafted he finally gets a shot at the top of the lineup and has an absolutely excellent game. You couldn't ask for more from him.

Game 2 vs Philadelphia

This is the game where the Leafs sleep-walked through 50 minutes, but Auston Matthews woke up long enough to score three goals and force overtime, where the Leafs won.

In Liljegren's second game on the top pairing, he didn't have such a good go of it. He did, however, get some excellent results, and overall, in the context of the full week of games, it's hard to be too critical of what turned out to be his worst performance.

Though Liljegren was praised for picking up two points, including an assist on the overtime winner, he didn't have as good of a game as he did against the Blue the game before.

In this game, Brodie played over 21 5v5 minutes while Liljegren played over 19.

Unfortunately, the Flyers possessed the puck for nearly 60% of the game when either of them was on the ice.

Liljegren finished with a 42% Corsi, while with him on the ice the shots were 12-8 for the Flyers, and worse, scoring chances were 14-6 (30%). (With Brodie on but Liljegren off, the Leafs did even worse).

Lucky for the Leafs, somehow they won their minutes 2-1 and despite their sub-par performance were graded generously in the press, ostensibly on a no-Rielly curve.

Liljegren finished this game with a 27% Expected Goals rating, while getting 4 minutes of power-play time and no PK time. As mentioned, he had 2 primary assists, one of them at 5v5 and one on the game winner in OT.

It is extremely hard to rate a game like this. When Liljegren played, the Flyers got a ton of chances and took advantage of a bad top pairing. Honestly, they seemed overmatched against their best players, and the Flyers' best players aren't even comparitively that good.

BUT, they had a ton of great results. The Leafs won, Liljegren had two points. The Leafs, outside of one ten minutes stretch where Matthews had a hattrick, played terribly. How much of that is on Liljegren? And we also routinely let Rielly get away with scoring but posting bad numbers by blaming TJ Brodie.

Overall, combine it with game one on the top pairing, and I am deeply impressed with Liljegren. Less so with Brodie. I was pretty harsh on Liljegren after this game, and I still somewhat stand by that assessment, but I think the first game, and the subsequent two games after this one, show that he is ready for these kinds of minutes, and so ultimiately I was probably unduley negative about this come at the time.

Game 3 vs Anaheim

This game was a blowout, which means that the coach does all sorts of experiments and crazy matchups, and so does the other team's coach.

It also means that score effects are a factor (which basically just means teams stop trying when the lead is big, so you should take everything about the game's statistics with a grain of salt.

An example would be that even though it was 9-2 Leafs, the Ducks had the puck more than the Leafs did overall. However, in the first period, the Leafs had the puck for 70% of the time at 5v5 and ended the frame up 4-1. Game over.

This makes it hard to assess Liljegren's performance, which is already limited to just a tiny 4 game sample. He had a 44% puck-possession rating (Corsi), and his Expected Goals rating was just 41%.

But that said, the Leafs won his minutes 2 goals to 1, and he finished the game with three assists. It's obviosuly a good game, especially when you factor in the score-effects.

Liljegren played 16+ minutes 5v5, over 4 minutes on the PP and even a minute on the PK.

Overall, a very solid performance as the Leafs #2 on the top-pairing with TJ Brodie. And watching these games, I feel that Brodie is only the #1 by default due to sonority. If Rielly was out for longer than five games, I'm betting that by the ten game mark it's Liljegren leading the team in minutes and not Brodie.