MISSING PIECE
Leafs need Marner or Nylander to become the No. 2 forward that Cup teams require
Mike Babcock understands the template as well as anyone.
When he won his only Stanley Cup a decade ago, his team was led by a Hall of Fame defenceman in Nicklas Lidstrom and two likely Hall of Fame forwards in Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg.
Also part of the Cup winning template: A high-end coach and a high-end goaltender.
That’s a consistent pattern when studying the past 10 Cup champions.
When Joel Quenneville’s Chicago Blackhawks won three of the past eight Stanley Cups, they had the definite ‘A’ centre in Jonathan Toews that almost all champions require, a drive-the-line Hall of Fame winger in Patrick Kane, a Hall of Fame defenceman in Duncan Keith and, in two of those championships, high-end goaltending.
Boston won with coach Claude Julien, centre Patrice Bergeron, defenceman Zdeno Chara and goalie Tim Thomas.
Los Angeles won twice with Darryl Sutter coaching, Anze Kopitar as No. 1 centre, followed by Jeff Carter and with the incomparable pairing of Drew Doughty on defence and Jonathan Quick in goal.
Which brings us to Babcock’s current team, the Toronto Maple Leafs.
If anything has changed or wavered in the first 45 games of the season, it has to be the belief in the Leafs on their way to a Stanley Cup template.
They are close. They have the coach. They have the centre in Auston Matthews. They have the goaltender in Frederik Andersen. They even have a defence, without a definitive No. 1, comparable to the Pittsburgh defence of a year ago that was good enough to win the Cup.
What the Leafs don’t know right now: Who is their No. 2 forward? And are the players they believed were on their way to stardom — Mitch Marner and William Nylander — really heading in that direction?
That has to be of great concern to Maple Leafs management. So much of the building of this hockey club was based on three young stars growing together, the way Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, as two young stars, grew together in Pittsburgh. The way Datsyuk and Zetterberg grew together in Detroit. The way Kane and Toews grew together in Chicago.
The Leafs have one definitive star in Matthews up front. The question now: Do they have another one?
At the break, Nylander has nine goals and 23 assists for 32 points. Through the weekend, that ranks him in a tie for 67th in league scoring. He is tied with Dustin Brown, Jason Zucker and Thomas Vanek — to name three players — and he’s one point ahead of the free-falling Toews with the free-falling Blackhawks.
Last season, he finished tied for 35th in NHL scoring. He’s dropped more than 30 positions on the scoring chart from a year ago and is on pace for fewer goals and fewer points than he scored in his first full season with the Leafs.
At the break, Marner is a mixed bag, low on the goal-scoring list with just five, high on the assist list with 26. But his 31 points rank him only 77th in the NHL in scoring, a drop of 42 places in one season. That has to be concerning for Babcock and Leafs management, not to mention Marner.
Without a definitive ‘A’ defenceman, the Leafs need that second star forward to become the kind of Cup contender they believe — and many of us believe — are fully capable of being.
But it can’t happen without a definitive No. 2 forward, and not when Nylander and Marner are performing more like complementary players than difference-makers.
Go through the past Cup winners. Pittsburgh had Crosby and Malkin and then Phil Kessel and Jake Guentzel to provide front-line offence. Chicago started with Toews and Kane, but had Marian Hossa as another star, and on different Cup teams had Patrick Sharp, Andrew Ladd, Dustin Byfuglien and Brandon Saad as complementary players. The Kings had Kopitar and Jeff Carter as differencemakers, then got help from their complementary players. It always starts with two stars up front.
The last team to win without two stars up front, the 2007 Anaheim Ducks, had two all-time greats, Chris Pronger and Scott Niedermayer, on defence. There is no NHL team with a defence like that today.
With Nylander, Marner, Nazem Kadri, James van Riemdsyk (assuming he’s staying), Tyler Bozak (for now), Connor Brown and Patrick Marleau, the Leafs have championship depth. But do they have a championship top? Who is their yang to Matthews’ yin?
When Babcock won in 2008, Datsyuk scored 97 points and Zetterberg had 87. In the three years the Blackhawks won, playing alongside Toews, Kane scored at a 93-point pace.
When the Bruins won the Cup, the great all-around Bergeron scored 20 playoff points, three fewer than team leader, David Krejci, who led the NHL in post-season scoring that year.
The current NHL team with the template closest to a Stanley Cup champion (outside Pittsburgh) is Tampa Bay.
They have the coach in Jon Cooper, the go-to forwards in Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos, the standout defenceman in the injured Victor Hedman and the goalie in Andrei Vasilevskiy.
What Brendan Shanahan, Lou Lamoriello and Babcock have to be asking themselves now: Can the Leafs get to where they need to go without one of Nylander or Marner becoming a star?