The Most Important Thing for the Toronto Maple Leafs to do this season

The Toronto Maple Leafs have made a lot of minor changes to their roster this summer, but ultimately, the only real thing they did was swap out Chris Tanev for Tyler Bertuzzi. Both players are a similar level of star player at their respective positions, and both make similar money, and though Tanev is much older, this was probably a good move.

The Toronto Maple Leafs chose Domi over Bertuzzi and I believe that is because of how he paired with Auston Matthews and scored like a Franchise Player for 206 minutes at the end of the season.

Now, that might seem like a small sample size - and it is - but, it was over 20% of Domi's total 5v5 minutes on the season, so it is significant.

The Leafs might be tempted to slot Domi back at the third-line centre position he played last year, but that would be a self-own so hilarious and misguided that it could only happen to the Leafs. So since I do partially expect the Leafs to do the dumbest thing possible and break up Domi and Matthews, I thought I'd write out the numbers here one more time just to reiterate how lucky the Leafs are they found this combo and how silly it would be to break it up.

The Most Important Thing for the Toronto Maple Leafs to do this season

I am not engaging in hyperbole when I say this is the most important thing the Leafs have to do this season. Domi with Matthews gives the team a free Franchise Player on their roster. Domi at centre on the third line gives the Leafs an overpaid replacement level player who screws up the entire lineup because of how bad his defense is and how many coaching adjustments the coach then has to make.

The simplest thing to do here is just to show how bad Domi was without Matthews and how insanely good he was with him. (all stats from naturalstattrick.com).

Without Matthews, Domi's puck-possession rating *Corsi* was 47.94%. That means that even with Sheldon Keefe giving Domi some of the most extreme sheltering in the entire NHL, the Leafs had the puck less than half the time Domi was on the ice.

Auston Matthews without Domi posted a 53% puck-possession rating with everyone else, but when you pair the two together the Leafs have the puck over 60% of the time - which I don't have to tell you is extremely good.

Due to Keefe's extreme sheltering and a high on-ice shooting percentage, the Leafs managed to win Domi's non-Matthews minutes, but just barely. The Leafs won Domi's non-Matthews minutes 42-36 (52%) but they shouldn't have - Domi's expected goals rating was just 47%.

So in order to win his minutes as the Leafs third-line centre, Max Domi needed to be one of the NHL's most sheltered players and also get lucky. Sheltering a player that much has reverberations all throughout the lineup and it makes it hard to strategize. For example, since the Leafs third line was so bad defensively, they had to turn to David Kampf for "shut down" minutes, which in turn led to them overplaying Ryan Reaves at times, or mixing up their lines and hurting their ability to generate offense.

But when you pair Domi with Matthews, you get magic. They not only won their minutes, they CRUSHED them. In 206 minutes they won their minutes 23-13 which is an incredibly dominant 64%. And to do this, they didn't have to get lucky - they posted an expected goals rating of 65% which means they were slightly unlucky with their results, which is crazy.

Domi goes from a 47% xGoals player to a 65% xGoals player when you put him with Matthews and then scores at a Franchise Player Rate.

With Nick Robertson, Domi scored at a decent 2.9 Points per 60 minutes of 5v5 ice-time. That is a first-line scoring rate, but the trade off is harder minutes for everyone else and the coach has to constantly maneuver to get Domi matchups he can win.

With Auston Matthews Domi scored at a completely nuts 3.77 Points per 60 minutes of 5v5 ice-time. That's a higher rate than Connor McDavid scores at. It's Franchise Player Level scoring.

And when you pair these two together, it allows the Leafs to play Mitch Marner on another line and stretch their lineup. It allows them to make a shut-down line if they want to without overplaying their fourth line.

There are literally no drawbacks to pairing Domi with Matthews, and yet, not doing so has an incredibly high cost. This should be a slam-dunk no-brainer, but we keep hearing rumours that the Leafs are looking for a left-winger, which is weird, because if Domi is playing on Matthews' left side, they don't really need one.