The Toronto Maple Leafs are one of the most top-heavy teams in the NHL. Most of their scoring comes from their top players, they get almost no offense out of their bottom-six, and their blue-line scores the least in the entire league.
The Toronto Maple Leafs must find balance, but it's not for lack of trying. The team is spending money on players that aren’t producing even close to what is expected of them. They need depth scoring, but that isn't their only issue.
They had no problem icing much deeper teams during much worse cap constraints before Treliving took over, but his depth moves have been mostly terrible.
The Leafs are getting next to nothing offensively from Max Pacioretty, Max Domi, David Kampf, Nick Robertson, Pontus Holmberg, Steven Lorentz, Connor Dewar, Ryan Reaves, Morgan Rielly, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Simon Benoit, Phillippe Myers, or Conor Timmins - and you can't have 13 players on an 18 man roster incapable of scoring.
Top-Heavy Toronto Maple Leafs Urgently Need More Scoring
Now, let me be clear about Steven Lorentz, David Kampf, Ryan Reaves, and all the defenseman I mentioned except Rielly and OEL: These are players that weren’t expected to be huge offensive contributors this season, but at the same time, management should know better than to fill the lineup with so many players who can't score at the NHL level.
That leaves players like Max Domi, Pontus Holmberg, Nick Robertson, and Max Pacioretty as ones who were expected to produce more this season, but have failed to do so.
Domi has three goals in 45 games, Pacioretty five in 35, Robertson eight in 45, and Holmberg two in 41 games.
That’s not going to cut it for a team that’s looking to make a deep playoff run. As we’ve noted in the past, the Toronto Maple Leafs postseason bane has been depth scoring, not defense.
We can expect the Leafs to play well defensively in the postseason, but the question will be finding depth scoring to offset the reliance on the top six.
Addressing the Toronto Maple Leafs depth scoring needs is no easy task. While there are options out there, the problem is finding the most suitable ones. One name that had been floating around was New York Islanders center Brock Nelson, who is old and expensive - the Leafs need to do better than that.
Nevertheless, there are other players out there not named Brock that could help the Leafs find balance in the bottom six and score more overall.
And it's just forwards that the Leafs need - if they had better/more puck-moving defenseman, they would score more. The Leafs simply cannot add more forwards and hope they'll start scoring more. Scoring goals starts with moving the puck up the ice, and the Leafs just don't have enough above-average puck-movers on the back-end to compliment their highly skilled forwards.
The Leafs will need to improve their ability to score goals if they want to win the Stanley Cup this year, and they must strike before the 4 Nations Face-Off as the tournament seems like the unofficial trade deadline this season.