Franchise Altering Toronto Maple Leafs Top Line Idea: Domi the Next Hyman

The main reason the Toronto Maple Leafs didn't re-sign Zach Hyman was because they were a team heavily invested on making the "right" play instead of the emotional one. The idea basically means figuring out what move has the best odds and making it every single time. It means understanding and then acting on the idea of "process > results."

The Toronto Maple Leafs - probably correctly - identified "magical thinking" as a plague infecting almost all the NHL's general managers and decided to try to be a cold, calculating machine that ignored luck and just kept making the "correct" decision regardless of the actual outcome of things.

As you can tell by Kyle Dubas' current mailing address, it turns out there is more to sports than obsessively betting on the highest percentage play.

Which brings me back to Zach Hyman - with 2 recent knee injuries and a driver's license that said he was going to soon be 30 years old, refusing to double his salary and commit to him for eight years was the correct decision, especially because at his age, NHL players get worse, not better. And not just sometimes - more or less every single team.

But as you know, Hyaman not only got better, he has pretty much performed as a Franchise Player and Hall of Famer for pennies on the dollar compared to what such a player normally costs.

(Perhaps the lesson here is that players who are 30 don't get better because teams don't ever give players who aren't stars the kind of opportunity Hyman got with McDavid, but that's an entirely different conversation).

Which brings me to Max Domi.

Franchise Altering Toronto Maple Leafs Top Line Idea: Domi the Next Hyman

Like Zach Hyman, Max Domi somehow received too much money for too long of a term just as he was about to hit 30, and while I've criticized the Leafs over this contract since the day they signed it, maybe I'm thinking more like the failed Leafs than I should be.

Maybe Domi is going to be a Franchise Level Player on a $4 million dollar contract. Maybe he's going to break out by getting to play with one of the league's best players and make me look like a complete fool.

Hyman paired up with the game's best creator of offense and scored 70 times this past year (playoffs and regular season combined) so what if one of the game's best passers suddenly was paired with the game's best goal scorer, and the same thing happened?

When he was paired with Matthews last season Domi scored at a rate of 3.77 points per 60 minutes of 5v5 ice-time for comparison, Connor McDavid's highest P/60 over a full season is 3.58. That means that the Domi and Matthews combo was not just good, but it was all-time great.

Of course, it was only for a short time and likely wouldn't be that high for a full season, but regardless, it's a very nice number that demands they stay together.

The mistake that Sheldon Keefe made was by putting Domi and Matthews with Matthew Knies or Bertuzzi. While that was obviously successful, the real genius is using Domi on the left side in the Hyman/Bunting role and putting William Nylander on right wing.

The genius of this is that William Nylander is a 40 goal scorer, but if you did into his 5v5 numbers last year, they weren't exactly amazing. This will make Nylander more effective at 5v5 because Matthews is a dominant play driver, and the offese here will be so great that it will negate how bad Domi and Nylander are at defense.

As an added bonus, Berube won't have to shelter either player or find ways to hide them - you could throw this line out against anyone and they will dominate, so you don't really have to care about their defense.

What will happen is that Nylander will get open a preposterous amount for a 40 goal scorer. Teams will want to cheat to cover Matthews but then Domi can send beautiful passes to Nylander.

If they played together, in all game situations, and were all healthy for 82 games, Domi getting 90 assists isn't out of the question. I realize how ridiculous that sounds, but Nylander and Matthews can combine to score 100 goals so if Domi is with them constantly, why not?

With Domi-Matthews-Nylander as line one, the Leafs second line can be Knies-Marner-McMann and then Tavares could centre a 3rd line with Nick Robertson. I think that makes the Leafs a lot more dangerous than they do right now with the same old Keefe line combos everyone keeps writing out.

To recap: Domi to left-wing feeding passes to Matthews and Nylander on the Leafs new first line will potentially lead to a Zach Hyman-Esque late-career breakout for Maximum Domi, giving the Leafs a surprise franchise-level player and propelling them to the Stanely Cup.