Matthews at centre of experiment
You can understand why NHL coaches love the idea of stoking internal competition. In a league in which the best players make fat guaranteed salaries that far exceed that of the coach’s paycheque, sometimes ice time is seen as a bench boss’s only motivational tool.
How else do you keep the millionaires from mailing it in?
Fair enough. Still, Maple Leafs fans who’ve followed the team’s recent history ought to be a little trepidatious about Sheldon Keefe’s suggestion on Friday that he plans to resuscitate one of Mike Babcock’s least successful bits of Leaf- on- Leaf conflict. Nothing’s set in stone, of course, but Keefe brought up the idea that when the 56- game regular season begins Wednesday against Montreal, Toronto will split last season’s four most productive powerplay point getters between two separate fivesomes, platooning the units on a relatively regular rotation.
“We like what it does in terms of the competitiveness of the two units competing against each other, the fact that we can remain more fresh, and have more urgency to the things that we do,” Keefe said.
The configurations rolled out in practice on Friday went like so. One unit featured Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, Toronto’s No. 1 and No. 2 powerplay producers last season, playing alongside newcomers Joe Thornton and Wayne Simmonds, this with Mor
gan Rielly manning the point. The other unit was headed by John Tavares and William Nylander — both of whom were regularly featured in Toronto’s top power- play unit last season — with Zach Hyman, Jason Spezza and newintown defenceman Mikko Lehtonen rounding out the quintet.
It’s only training camp. Things can change at Keefe’s whim. But surely Keefe understands that the Leafs have been down this road before, and that it didn’t go particularly smoothly. Under Babcock there was no end of internal angst about the rightful distribution of ice time with the man advantage.
Babcock, of course, favoured the internal competition model to keep players honest.
“I still like when you have two ( units) and you compete to see who’s out there,” he said.
And while that worked at times — a couple of seasons ago, the Leafs scored nine power- play goals in their first seven games — Toronto’s play with an opponent in the box wasn’t always as elite as many figured it should have been. And there were times when Babcock’s insistence on “what have you done for me lately” accountability got ridiculous. At one point in the 2018- 19 season, Matthews was replaced on the first unit by Kasperi Kapanen, who to that point had never registered a powerplay point in an NHL game.
You could see why a star player would have a problem with that. On a lot of teams in the league, after all, the best players get the run of the power play. Last season, Alex Ovechkin was on the ice for a league- leading 91 per cent of the Washington Capitals’ time with a man advantage. Edmonton’s Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl were both on for 87 per cent of Edmonton’s power- play minutes. Two seasons, ago, Matthews got 60 per cent of Toronto’s powerplay time. That ranked No. 1 on the Leafs and No. 60 in the league.
Last season, when the twounit approach was softened, Matthews got 71 per cent of Toronto’s PP time, 15th- best in the NHL. Which, considering Matthews has scored more goals than anyone not named Ovechkin since he arrived in the league, still seemed a tad low.
There’s a chance Keefe’s two- unit approach is a façade. The club acquired the likes of Thornton and Simmonds, though they’re both well past their competitive primes, for their experience and toughness and mentorship. And since it’s difficult to be an effective leader as a fringe player, the club clearly believes it’s important they’re given the chance to be integral pieces. Ergo, Thornton’s skating on the first line and a newly hatched power- play unit with Matthews and Marner.
But there’s a chance, too, that Leafs management — the same guys who fired Babcock — also believe Babcock was on to something when he insisted the best players work every day to justify their privileges. General manager Kyle Dubas spent the off- season talking about how the team will only reach its full potential if Toronto’s best players become “willing to sacrifice a little bit in each of their own individual realms.” And on Friday, when Keefe spoke about the plan to assign Matthews to his first career penalty- killing duties, the coach said he considers the job as much an opportunity as a “responsibility.”
After all, killing penalties is mostly a thankless job dominated by grind- embracing specialists. There are NHL franchises that would never dream of saddling a star with the gig. Nikita Kucherov, the Tampa Bay Lightning gamebreaker, doesn’t get a sniff on the penalty kill. Ovechkin hasn’t scored a short- handed goal since 2009. Though McDavid has seen some mandown minutes during his career, last season the Oilers announced they would no longer use him in the role.
Matthews, if he gets his chance — and Keefe insisted Matthews won’t be used on the PK “on a full- time basis” — will be a short- handed neophyte. In four seasons in the league, he’s spent an incidental seven minutes on the ice with a manpower disadvantage. He’s never scored a man down. But Keefe said the Leafs want him to learn the role because a) they could occasionally use his strength in the faceoff circle while killing penalties, and b) there are situations when it’s important to have your best players on the ice, no matter the manpower situation.
Still, at last year’s training camp when Babcock was asked about the possibility of Matthews killing penalties, the coach spoke as though his top goal scorer wasn’t interested in the duty.
“I talked to ( Matthews) about that, I think it was two years ago, and his basic thought was
‘ I’ve never done it and don’t plan on doing it,’ ” Babcock said.
If Babcock always made the idea of a Leaf playing elite defensive hockey seem sacred and darn near unachievable, the brain trust is taking a different tack: They’re trying to make it seem glamorous. Team president Brendan Shanahan was quoted a while back pronouncing Matthews one of the few players with the ability to lead the league in scoring while being its best defensive player, listing prime- career Michael Jordan as an equivalent. And this week Keefe has gone out of his way to announce Matthews as “a dominant defensive player.”
Matthews, when he was asked about it on Friday, seemed to have warmed to the idea of playing on the short end of a five- on- four, at least slightly.
“I like it,” he said. “I think it’s something I can grow into … It takes a little bit of thinking, but at the end of the day you’re just playing hockey.”
The question is: Would a player of Matthews’s rare skill set better serve his club by taking a breather on the PK and getting the full run of every PP? The answer, in a lot of NHL cities, is a no- brainer of an unequivocal yes. In Toronto, as usual, it’s more complicated.