The Toronto Maple Leafs Hope to Win the Cup With the Worst Blue-Line of Cap Era
The Toronto Maple Leafs hope to recreate the glory of the 2016-17 Pittsburgh Penguins.
The 2017 Penguins won the Stanley Cup while Kris Letang was injured and their best defenseman was (current) ex (but then future) Toronto Maple Leafs defender Ron Hainsey as their best defender.
It is - as far as I know (and that's pretty far) - the worst blue-line of the Cap Era to win the Stanley Cup.
This year's Leafs blue-line is probably worse, and so they are hoping to re-create the magic of that Penguins run. (The Leafs have Matt Murry on their roster and could start a rookie in the playoffs over him, so there's that...).
The Toronto Maple Leafs Hope to Win the Cup With the Worst Blue-Line of Cap Era
The Leafs best defender is Morgan Rielly, who is on pace for the 3rd highest point total of his career, 65 extrapolated over 82 games. Unfortunately, for the first time since 2018 Rielly is under 50% xGoals. As far as a number-one defensemen go, he's just not in the league of what other teams are offering.
The Leafs most likely playoff opponents are icing Adam Fox, Jacob Slavin, Charlie McAvoy, Victor Hedman, and Aaron Ekblad (or Monteur, or Forsling). If those guys are a 10, Rielly is a 4. It's just not particularly close for the Leafs here, and it gets worse.
The Leafs tend to sabotage Rielly's ability to be effective by saddling him with a dud. That strategy hasn't changed this year as they usually pair him with Ilya Lyubushkin, who is, at best, a decent number-seven.
After Rielly next on the Leafs depth chart comes Jake McCabe (solid, but maybe not as good as you'd want your second best defender to be. Certainly he's no Lindholm or Forling or Burns). But then things get really dicey.
The Leafs offer up Liljegren as third on the depth chart, but he's injured, and was scratched in each of the last two playoffs. No matter how he plays when he comes back they pretty much have to use him because their ability to move the puck from the back-end is among the worst in the NHL, and he's their second-best at it.
The Leafs have two broken-down near-retirement vets in Brodie and Giordano, each of whom has been healthy-scratched at various times.
After that the Leafs have 3 x defensive-defenseman who really just end up getting hemmed in their own end most of the night. Benoit is the best of the bunch, but none of them would earn a lineup spot on New York, Carolina, Florida Tampa or Boston.
Last but not least is Conor Timmins, who puts up great stats and offers the Leafs a strong puck-moving option that they don't seem to want, even though they really should.
Overall, it's a blue-line without a true star player, and only two, maybe three players who are above replacement level, depending on what Liljegren gives you.
The blue-line also lacks upside, and more than anything, it lacks puck-moving ability. It's the worst blue-line of any playoff team and if they win it will be the worst blue-line to do so since the Penguins pulled it off in 2017 with Ron Hainsey, Brian Dumoulin, Ollie Maatta, Justin Schultz, Ian Cole and Trevor Daley.
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The odds of this happening are not good, but the fun of the NHL Playoffs is that it still might.