Improved penalty kill rare positive for Leafs
The Maple Leafs’ team identity appears to be forming around a key factor — keeping pucks out of the net.
And the most important development in that area has been Toronto’s penalty kill, which has been stellar of late.
While still in the bottom third of the league, Toronto’s penalty kill has stopped the opposition on 17 of the past 19 penalty kills. The Leafs opened the season having managed a success rate of just 23 for 32, a large reason why the penalty kill still settles into 21st in the NHL.
“One of the things about the penalty kill is that everyone does it a bit differently, it’s not like the forecheck, where most of the time its 1-2-2 . . . everyone has their own style of penalty kill, what they take away, and what they’ll give,” said Leafs defenceman Matt Hunwick, who leads all Leafs with an average of three minutes and 38 seconds per game on the penalty kill.
Hunwick points out that part of the Leafs’ recent penalty kill success has to do with the fact the team is simply getting more comfortable with it and the way they play on the ice.
That has been a large part of the story on a Leafs team trying to establish itself under the demands of Mike Babcock’s systems, while finding chemistry on a team where the bottom two lines are largely rebuilt.
Penalty killers largely stem from those bottom lines, and the Leafs’ penalty kill ice time leaders feature newcomers Hunwick and forward Michael Grabner.
Defenceman Roman Polak is third, while rookie Byron Froese has been something of a surprise in landing the fifth-most penalty-kill minutes on the team.
Froese, like all rookies, realized quickly that if he wasn’t brought up for goal scoring, he would need to establish a niche on the team to earn ice time.
“I’ve always played it (penalty kill), in the East Coast League, in the AHL, and I’ve always enjoyed it,” Froese said. “One of the main reasons for that is I seem to win some face offs, so I practice faceoffs and bring in that skill on the penalty kill.”
Froese and the Leafs own one of the better faceoff marks in the NHL, but the team overall has hurt itself, taking a league-leading five bench minors this season (too many men on the ice).
Interestingly, that faceoff success comes at a time when the league instituted new faceoff rules for the 2015-16 season, where the defending team’s face off man must now put his stick down first on faceoffs in his defensive zone.
“One game we gave up three power play goals, but at some point, you start to get comfortable with yourself as a team,” Hunwick said.
“It has to be a total team effort (penalty kill), trying to give the opposition the worst possible shot at the net. We’ve been good on faceoffs too so that helps us a lot under those new rules.”
Toronto has also countered its penalty kill time by drawing penalties; Nazem Kadri, for instance, who led the NHL with 31drawn penalties last season, wracked up eight more this past week.
Toronto’s power play, though, still ranks in the bottom third of the league and has yet to show the progress seen with the penalty kill. NOTES: Daniel Winnik returned to practice Monday after what appeared to be a left leg injury in Saturday’s game in Washington. Goalie Jonathan Bernier also practiced for the first time since a lower body injury suffered against Pittsburgh a week ago. Both players travelled with the team to Dallas Monday, but neither is expected to play Tuesday against the Stars . . . Defenceman Dion Phaneuf missed practice with the flu Monday but is expected to play Tuesday in Dallas.