Leafs surprisingly close to following Penguins’ championship template
Jim Rutherford, general manager of the past two Stanley Cup champions, was talking on the phone the other day when the subject of the Toronto Maple Leafs happened to come up. “You know who they remind me of ?” the Pittsburgh Penguins GM said. “They remind me of us.” This version of the Maple Leafs has yet to win a round in the playoffs, has yet to become the Stanley Cup contender they hope to be, but so many people in senior management and scouting around the NHL see the Leafs as Stanley Cup champions. Not today, necessarily. It’s just a matter of when.
But the belief is, if Pittsburgh has become the dominant team in hockey and the basis of comparison for the Leafs, they are a surprising match in so many ways.
What is the template for winning in the Stanley Cup playoffs? You need a great coach and upper-echelon goaltending. You need stars up front to play like stars. You need depth and speed and some surprising contributors. And if Pittsburgh is the model, all you need is a workmanlike defence that can be bailed out by strong goaltending, exceptional forwards and sharp neutral zone play.
So how does that break down? The Penguins have a terrific coach in Mike Sullivan. The Leafs have one of hockey’s best coaches in Mike Babcock. Pittsburgh has a sharp starting goaltender in Matt Murray, but not the depth in goal they’ve had in the past with Marc-Andre Fleury gone. The Leafs can match, maybe better the starter with Frederik Andersen in net. The Penguins won the Cup last June with a defence that consisted of Ron Hainsey, Brian Dumoulin, Ian Cole, Olli Maatta, Justin Schultz and Trevor Daley, the first pair being Hainsey and Dumoulin.
The Leafs will start this playoff season with Hainsey, Morgan Rielly, Jake Gardiner, Nikita Zaitsev, Travis Dermott and Roman Polak on the back end; their first pair is Hainsey and Rielly.
Not much to choose between the players on the blue line. Up front, Pittsburgh starts with Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Phil Kessel, three of the top scorers in the NHL. The Leafs can’t match that yet — maybe ever — but they do have Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander.
And as deep as the Penguins are, the Leafs have more scoring depth and speed than the champions.
They have James van Riemsdyk and Nazem Kadri, two 30-goal scorers, and a 27-goal man in Patrick Marleau. Pittsburgh has Patric Hornqvist and Jake Guentzel as complimentary scorers.
The Pens spread their offence out at even strength with Malkin centring one line, Crosby another and Kessel playing wing on the third line.
The Leafs comparables would have Matthews and Nylander on one line, Marner and Kadri with Marleau on another, and the 36-goal scorer van Riemsdyk on the third line with veteran Tyler Bozak.
Rielly, who partners with the rather quiet Hainsey, has talked to him about winning the Cup, what that experience was like. Basically he got back a grunt or two, maybe a word or two, which is sometimes how Hainsey likes to communicate.
“Like I said, he doesn’t really go into things like that,” Rielly said. But Rielly did say “when you look at it that way, there are comparisons. We’ll take that as a compliment (that Rutherford said the Leafs reminded him of the Penguins.)” During this regular season, the Penguins had three scorers in the NHL’s Top 10, yet the Leafs and Pittsburgh both finished with exactly 270 goals.
The Leafs, ever fighting to get their goals-against down, allowed 18 fewer goals-against than the Penguins allowed and more than doubled Pittsburgh in goal differential, one of Babcock’s favourite numbers, 45-22. Pittsburgh had the best power play in the NHL, scoring 68 times. The Leafs were a few notches behind, scoring 56. But in percentage terms, the Penguins scored 26.2 per cent on the power play, the Leafs were second at 25 per cent. Hainsey did say he sees some similarities between the Penguins and the Leafs. “Certainly, the offensive talent through multiple lines, it’s quite a good thing to have,” the veteran said. “You can score some goals when you’re not at your best because you have so much talent.” Then he talked about “the pace, the speed, moving the puck through the neutral zone” that both teams seem to specialize in. The Rutherford comparison makes some sense. There’s only one real problem for Toronto. The Leafs open against the Boston Bruins, a playoff series that has pick-em written all over it. There is no definitive favourite here. And getting out of the Atlantic Division is anything but easy.
This Leafs team may go out in the first round — the Bruins are that strong an opponent — or they might be playing into June. One seems no more possible or probable than the other. Babcock was told Tuesday what Rutherford said about his team. He then took his hand and symbolically knocked on wood. “I hope he’s right.”