Leafs missing key piece of puzzle
No. 2 forward needed to be top contender
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 Hockey Hall of Fame defenceman, 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 Grade A centreman in Jonathan Toews that almost all champion teams require, a drive- the- line future hall of famer in Patrick Kane, a future 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, goalie Tim Thomas.
Los Angeles won twice with Darryl Sutter coaching, Anze Kopitar as a 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 t he first 45 games of the season, it has to be the belief in the Leafs being on their way to that 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 for the Penguins.
What they 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 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 is: do they have another one?
At the break, Nylander has nine goals and 23 assists for 32 points in 45 games.
He’s one point ahead of the free- falling Toews with the free- falling Blackhawks. Nylander is on pace for fewer goals and fewer points than he scored in his first full season with the Leafs.
At t he 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 is a drop- off from last season. That has to be concerning to Babcock and Leaf management, not to mention Marner.
Without a definitive ‘A’ defenceman and as good as Morgan Rielly is with the puck, the Leafs need that second star forward to become the kind of Cup contender they believe — and many of us believe — they are fully capable of being.
But it can’t happen without a definitive No. 2 for- ward, a second star 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 frontline offence. Chicago started with Toews and Kane, but had Marian Hossa as another star and on different Cup teams had Patrick Sharp, Andrew Ladd and Brandon Saad as complimentary players. The Kings had Kopitar and Carter as difference makers, then got help from their complementary players. It always starts with two stars up front.
The l ast t eam to win without two stars up front 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 Riemsdyk ( 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, Zetterberg had 92. In the three years the Blackhawks won, playing alongside Toews, Kane scored at an 89- point pace. When the Bruins won the Cup, the great all- around Bergeron had 20 points in the playoffs, three fewer than team leader David Krejci with 23. Krejci led the playoffs in 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 is: can the Leafs get to where they need to go without one of Nylander or Marner becoming a star?