Disappearing act by Bozak perplexes Leafs
Centreman had looked to be turning corner
It was at the end of November when some began to wonder if Tyler Bozak had finally grown into legitimately being a No. 1 centre.
At the time, he was ranked in the top 20 in scoring with 22 points in 23 games. He was top 10 in goals with 11, top five in faceoff winning percentage and tied for second in both power-play goals and shorthanded goals. Among centres, he had more points than Jonathan Toews, Ryan Getzlaf and Joe Thornton.
And then December hit and along with it, so did reality.
Top-line centre? With just three goals and 11 points in his past 29 games — including three points and a minus-8 rating in the 12 games since coach Peter Horachek assumed command — Bozak does not even look like he belongs on the third line. Of course, few Leafs do these days.
It might be unfair to single out Bozak when Nazem Kadri has four points in his last 13 games, Phil Kessel has three goals in 21 games, and David Clarkson has one goal in 19 games. As the 28-year-old said on Thursday, “Our line hasn’t been producing well enough. Pretty much no one on the team has been.”
Still, Bozak’s drop in production, which coincides with Toronto’s drop in the standings, sheds light on a fact that will not go away: the Leafs remain a team that is without a prototypical No. 1 centre.
Until that changes, nothing about them will improve.
Horachek seems to realize this more than anyone else. In two of his previous jobs — as an assistant coach for the Nashville Predators and as interim head coach for the Florida Panthers — his teams lacked a No. 1 centre and as a result had trouble generating any offence. The Panthers ranked 29th in goals scored last season, while the Predators were tied for 29th in Horachek’s final year as an assistant.
In 12 games under Horachek, the Leafs have scored just 17 goals.
“In Nashville, we didn’t have a prototypical No. 1 centre — the Getzlafs, the Kopitars, that kind,” Horachek said Thursday. “Your work ethic and approach to the game has to be strong. You just have to work with your lines and how you are going to play and get everybody to get on the best situation that you can by playing a good team play.”
Bozak said playing the centre position under Horachek has been a bit of a transition. Unlike Randy Carlyle, whose teams created offence off the rush by forcing turnovers, Horachek relies on the centre to essentially work as a third defenceman.
“I require them to come down lower in the zone and not leave the zone,” Horachek said. “Stay lower and be more supportive. We need them to come back into the zone a lot quicker and stay in support with the D. That’s the biggest area that the centreman has and it takes more work. I think they’re all up to the challenge, it’s just knowing that the they have to do it.”
Essentially, it is more difficult to play this way. It takes a player who is a strong skater and strong physically. Without those kinds of centre, as Horachek said, you have to “start relying on the collective.”
The Leafs would appear to have neither.
That might be the biggest takeaway from the season. As Bozak acknowledged, the Leafs might have been scoring far more goals when Carlyle was coaching. But they were playing a high-risk, highreward style that resulted in less possession time and more shots against. Now that they are playing a by-the-book structured defensive game (the Leafs have allowed fewer than 30 shots seven times), the challenge is finding new ways to generate offence.
Ultimately, it might require finding a No. 1 centre who can handle the workload.
“I think we’re cheating less probably than we were before,” Bozak said. “Maybe we were getting more opportunities because of that. But we were giving up a lot more shots because of that too and a lot more Grade A scoring chances.
“What’s frustrating is we’re doing a lot better at those things and we’re not scoring like before when we weren’t doing those things. So it’s a crazy game.”