Assign a New Coach for the Power Play
After seeing the absolute domination by teams like the Edmonton Oilers, Tampa Bay Lightning and Colorado Avalanche on the power play in recent years with their loaded superstars, it is sometimes quite incomprehensible why the Leafs don’t have the same level of dominating play with the man advantage with their own collection of stars.
After all, their “core four” should be quite comparable to the units thrown out by the aforementioned teams above.
In reality, the Leafs actually aren’t as bad as they seem, as they have ranked within the top 10 in the league the past few years in terms of power play success rate.
But for whatever reason, their power play numbers always seem to go on a decline as the season progresses, and eventually bottoms out come playoff time.
This year was no different, as they were only able to muster just one measly goal in 21 chances in the series against the Bruins.
Have the Leafs power play setup gone stale, or have teams been able to somehow figure out their strategies during the course of the season and end up shutting them down when the games mattered most.
Whichever the case it may be, what the Leafs power play coach has implemented as their game plan clearly hasn’t been working.
For this past season, the onus was on Guy Boucher when he was assigned to the role of managing the Leafs power play. Unfortunately, it ended up failing at the worst possible time. As a result, the team needs to find a new coach to run their power play for the upcoming year for Toronto to have any chance of success beyond the regular season.