Oh, they’ll score a lot ... but what about the D?
Leafs’ playoff success will ultimately hinge on goals against
TORONTO — A season ago, the bookends to the Maple Leafs storyline were as startling as they were unforgettable.
In their first game of the campaign — a walkover win in Winnipeg — the Maple Leafs announced the enormity of their offensive firepower by scoring seven goals. In their final game, a Game 7 first-round loss in Boston in which Toronto entered the third period with a 4-3 lead, they allowed seven. The distance between those converted touchdowns illustrated as well as anything the gap which existed between Toronto’s tantalizing potential as a talent-brimming juggernaut and its cringeworthy propensity for the kind of defensive ineptitude which doesn’t always play well in the playoffs.
How skilfully the Maple Leafs paper over the holes in their defensive-zone approach will go a long way toward defining the most promising era in club history since the Stanley Cup-winning heydays of the previous century. In short: Everyone knows they can put the puck in the net. Nobody can be sure if they can adequately keep it out.
“If you want to win in this league, you have to keep the puck out of your net,” said Morgan Rielly, the veteran defenceman. “And it has to start with allowing fewer shots.”
Indeed, in the past two seasons combined no NHL goaltender has been asked to stop more pucks than Toronto’s Frederik Andersen, who finished fourth in Vezina Trophy voting in 2018. Perhaps it’s no wonder that Andersen’s worst month of last year’s regular season, as measured by save percentage, came in March, and that his performance in the playoffs was below standard. Asking less of him by allowing less of a deluge of opposing rubber could go a long way toward keeping him fresher in the long run.
“We have to do a better job at controlling our end, not letting (opponents) in as easily, and not letting them roll around,” Rielly said.
“And the idea is to play offence. When you have this many guys who are as talented as they are, you want the puck.”
Defence and offence aren’t mutually exclusive, of course. One feeds the other, and vice versa. During Toronto coach Mike Babcock’s 10-year run as coach of the Red Wings, during which Detroit played an NHL high 123 playoff games, the Wings ranked as the fourth-best defensive team in the league over the span as measured by goals against per game. That team was certainly defined by defence. Nick Lidstrom won four of his seven Norris trophies as the NHL’s best defenceman with Babcock on the bench, just as Pavel Datsyuk won all three of his Selke trophies as best defensive forward during that span. But those Babcock-era Red
Wings were also an offensive force. During the coach’s 10 seasons on the bench, no team scored more goals in the regular season and playoffs combined.
Babcock, who’s entering his fourth year of an eight-year deal in Toronto, has yet to find that same winning combination with the Maple Leafs. But the team has been making steady improvements in its defensive ranking during Babcock’s time here. In 2015-16, when the Leafs finished dead last en route to winning the draft lottery, Toronto ranked
25th in goals against per game. A season later, when they made the playoffs, they ranked 22nd. Last year, 12th. That’s the kind of progress which suggests the organizational push to internally develop a passable defensive corps — an approach meant to avoid spending assets and salarycap space on the kind of top-pairing blue-liner many observers have insisted Toronto requires — is on the right track. In lieu of a Norris-worthy star, they’re building a speed-and-skill-focused group which ideally sticks to a system.
The principles are simple enough. Defend as little as possible by moving the puck out of the defensive zone as quickly as possible. Encourage defencemen to be offensive-minded. Attack rather than be attacked.
“(Babcock) wants the group to defend moving ahead, not to back off. To defend with a certain amount of pace, and pressure,” GM Kyle Dubas said in the leadup to the season.
“That makes it a good fit … That’s what our expectation is. That is what we want our group to become.”
This team, as an offensive force, is tantalizing.
Last season, when only the Lightning and Jets scored more goals, the Maple Leafs had the second-best power play based on success rate. This year they’ve added John Tavares, who, since he came into the league in 2009, has scored more goals than everybody not named Alex Ovechkin, Steven Stamkos, Sidney Crosby and Corey Perry. That’s not a bad replacement for the team-leading 36 goals provided by the departed James van Riemsdyk. It’s an embarrassment of riches when you consider that in the past two seasons combined, Auston Matthews shares the NHL lead in even-strength goals with Edmonton’s Connor McDavid, and that Mitch Marner led Toronto in scoring last season while spending a lot of his time on the third and fourth lines.
Yes, the Maple Leafs can put the puck in the net. But can they adequately keep it out? Rielly and Jake Gardiner, the latter playing in a contract year in the wake of his disastrous minus-five in Game 7, will have a lot to say about that. Ditto Nikita Zaitsev, the blue-liner coming off an inconsistent second season. Ditto Ron Hainsey, who in the past two seasons combined has played more short-handed minutes than anyone in the league other than Zdeno Chara, and who, at age 37, may or may not share the 41-yearold Chara’s gift for appearing ageless. Certainly the club hopes the contributions from relative newcomers Travis Dermott, Igor Ozhiganov and Justin Holl will make a considerable difference in Toronto’s quest to turn their defensive liabilities into ancient memories.
But the proof won’t come for more than six months. Until then, expect fireworks early, and a season-long quest to prove the Maple Leafs can be something better than a defensive dumpster fire when it truly counts.