The Toronto Maple Leafs could solve a lot of their depth problems by playing three of their four Franchise Players on different lines.
By spreading out the wealth, the Toronto Maple Leafs could make it so that teams have to always face a Franchise Player for almost the entire game.
This would mitigate the team's lack of centre-ice depth, and allow them to use Max Domi on the wing with Auston Matthews, and it would make their team much better overall.
So far, Craig Berube hasn't shown any appetite for such a move, but there is always hope. Speaking of hope, we are 52 games into the season, and the Leafs are nearly a sure thing to make the playoffs. However, how far they go will depend a lot on who they add at the Trade Deadline.
The Leafs can't solve all their problems, so they will need some of their worst players to improve their play. We know that both goalies, and all four superstars are having a great year, at least when healthy, but what about the rest of the team?
Here is a list of the players on the Leafs who have had negative value so far this season. (All stats naturalstattrick.com).
List of Toronto Maple Leafs Players Who Hurt More Then They Help
Expected Goals Percentage
On Natural Stat Trick (link above) you can set the parameters to 5v5 and see a player's on-ice expected goals percentage. This number takes a whole bunch of other stats into account and comes up with a single number which gives us a good idea of a player's value.
If he is above 50% Expected Goals, his team is expected to win when he plays. If it is below 50%, then his team is expected to lose his minutes. Anything over 52% is very good and anything over 55% is elite.
Here are the Leafs players who have an expected goals percentage lower than 50%: Bobby McMann, Nick Robertson, Pontus Holmberg, David Kampf, Ryan Reaves, Connor Dewar, Simon Benoit, Fraser Minten.
Interesting that Max Domi is not on this list. He is just slightly above 50%, however to get to that number he has to be fed a steady diet of offensive zone starts that then are not going to Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews, so accounting for this, I'd say he actually does have negative value, because that is a huge cost to pay to get a 3rd liner to 50%.
The Athletics' Player Cards
The Athletic puts out cards for each player with a whole bunch of stats, including a one-number rating that reflects a player's total value. Because Expected Goals is just one way of looking at things, I thought this project would have a lot more credibility if we looked at a second source.
Here is the players that rate a zero or below on the Leafs according to the Athletic: Max Domi, Connor Timmins, Steven Lorentz, Nick Robertson, Max Pacioretty, David Kampf, Pontus Holmberg, Conor Dewar, Ryan Reaves and Simon Benoit.
These are likely more accurate than just going by Expected Goals. Really makes you think about how bad of a job Brad Treliving has done building a team around the Leafs best players.