Grading Sheldon Keefe's Season as Toronto Maple Leafs Head Coach
The Toronto Maple Leafs exited out of the first round of the NHL Playoffs, but you could hardly blame the coach for their loss.
I am having a tough time grading Keefe because his General Manager gave him little to no help. Keefe was stuck having to dress the same liabilities for most of the season, but Keefe did make his fair share of poor decisions, so ultimately, I decided to give him a C.
Sheldon Keefe Grade: C
I wanted to give Keefe a higher grade than this, as he was hung out to dry by the front office for the most part. However, I could not go any higher, considering we saw T.J. Brodie play almost 800 minutes on the top pairing with Morgan Reilly.
Maple Leafs fans had been begging Keefe to change this pairing since last year's playoff run. It was very evident to me and a lot of others that Brodie could no longer handle a top pairing role. With hindsight being 20/20, Keefe's stubbornness to keep Brodie on the top pairing for this long only looks worse on him, considering he has healthy-scratched Brodie for all but one playoff game.
Outside of Brodie, there is a lot of lineup decisions you could knit pick and it is all hindsight, but the only other lineup stuff I feel is worth mentioning is Sheldon Keefe's usage of Nicholas Robertson. We will get into how good Robertson was for the Leafs later in this article, but the fact that Robertson lost minutes to Ryan Reaves late in the season was a borderline fireable offence.
Outside of lineup-related talks, it is hard not to question Leafs' competence as a coach when the Leafs continue to have the same problem scoring goals in the playoffs every single years. Sure, it's nice that the Leafs big stars are defensively responsible, but maybe it is time to let them fly?
I gave Keefe the C because I don't think anything he really had an effect on this team one way or another, It just felt like he was the face behind the bench.
It is no surprise that the Leafs moved on from Keefe, but I think the front office and the goaltenders deserve far more blame than Keefe does for the Maple Leafs slightly underperforming this season.