For some years now, the Leafs have been in a rut. Granted, with an NHL-best nine straight post-season appearances it’s a rut some franchises would do ungodly things to get stuck in, but it’s been a rut all the same. Even if it’s a positive one, it’s still a problem when you’re trying to move the ol’ cart from the good to the great lane.
That “rut” has been defined by one thing: They paid top dollar for four superstars right when the cap went flat. They were great players, yes, and it was a great place to start from, of course.
But …
As a result, they had to fill in around them with cheap depth options.
As result, they had ho-hum depth guys who were fine but couldn’t move the needle.
As a result, they didn’t play them in big moments.
As a result, it all fell on the stars who knew – along with their opponent – that they were going to be out there when games were on the line, regardless of how they’d been playing.
As a result, they had a clear Team A and Team B, where a handful of guys mattered (including maybe a few names past the Core Four), and the rest were extras in a movie with a predictable ending.
-
Real Kyper and Bourne
Nick Kypreos and Justin Bourne talk all things hockey with some of the biggest names in the game. Watch live every weekday on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+ — or listen live on Sportsnet 590 The FAN — from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. ET.
When Mitch Marner chose to leave the city of Toronto, he accomplished something for the franchise that it had either been unwilling or unable to do for itself: he loosened up salary cap space from the top, allowing the Leafs to finally be constructed a different way.
Different, yes.
Better?
Well … stand by on that.
Now again, (cover your ears one last time, Craig Berube) the ‘Core Four,’ those Team A-led Leafs, were pretty darn good, as you may recall. They won the Atlantic for the first time last year, and they put up 100-plus points as a team regularly. Last season they beat Ottawa in the playoffs and gave Florida its hardest fight in a Stanley Cup run, if you think that matters for anything.
Most of the detractors, though, chalked up Toronto’s slew of “moral victories” (such as “gave a team a good fight!”) to the problem alluded to above, which they’ve viewed as a critical deficiency. That being that only Team A mattered, that their depth couldn’t help, and so when the top guys were keyed on and shut down (or shut down by their own doing), they didn’t have a Plan B to power through.
The Leafs have never had anything close to a third line with names like Anton Lundell, or Eetu Luostarinen, let alone a Brad Marchand. It’s a high bar, focusing on the depth of a Cup champion team where nobody was making a penny more than $10 million a year, but that’s the direct competition. That’s the “great lane” that exists just left on the Leafs’ comfortable rut.
These detractors thought the Leafs’ depth should matter more, and so, here we are, with them getting their wish.
Because, oh buddy, does it ever matter now.
The graduation from “spectators” to “people of importance” comes with some pressure. Getting a few chip-in points won’t be gravy, it’s needed as part of the main course with the departure of what Marner provided the offence.
The good news for Leafs fans is the team didn’t just go get a few available free agents from what was out there. They traded for some prime-aged depth guys who can matter, who have moved the needle in the past, and who can allow a top-to-bottom gradient rather than there being some oceanic drop-off in quality at the bottom six.
They’ve bet on improvements from players with upside coming off down years, and I’m not even sure they need them to be spectacular for the depth to be improved.
Last year’s most common bottom two lines included a lot of Connor Dewar and Pontus Holmberg and Ryan Reaves and, yes, some Nick Robertson on fairly purposeless depth lines. Calle Jarnkrok was hurt, David Kampf was in the doghouse, and they just couldn’t tape together any kind of group that had a clear purpose.
This year Toronto’s bottom six could start with pairs like:
Stephen Lorentz – Scott Laughton
In those two open winger spots, take your pick from whoever of Bobby McMann, Max Domi and Matias Maccelli aren’t in the top six. Then you’ve got Jarnkrok (who is healthy this time around), Kampf (who’s played 15-16 minutes a night on good Leafs teams), Robertson, Michael Pezzetta, and even Easton Cowan depending on how things go.
Sure, there’s enough ingredients there to cook up something that works.
Joshua-Roy-McMann is an extremely big third line with some skill. Lorentz-Kampf-Laughton is a solid fourth, while something like Domi-Laughton-Robertson/Cowan could be deployed offensively. Lorentz-Laughton-Pezzetta could be a forechecking and feisty force. And none of those mention Jarnkrok who, again, can be a contributor when healthy.
Options.
I also believe that by the trade deadline, the Leafs will add a top-six winger, which are always for sale in February. They just don’t have enough top-end skill to fill the top six how you’d want, and Brad Treliving has confirmed that with his own comments. Add one more name up top, and the bottom-six gets better again.
That’s a lot of prime-aged guys with good size and a willingness to do whatever is asked of them. There are higher ceilings: McMann has scored 20, Roy gets 15 a year, Joshua has threatened 20 before (in 63 games), Laughton scored 18 a couple years back, and Lorentz is good for 10. None of that gets you to Marner’s totals, but if they can relieve the pressure from the top-six, there’s more to be had from both Auston Matthews and Matthew Knies.
It’s obvious some players are going to get moved out of Toronto (or even waived), and probably soon. The bottom six options I wrote above barely include Robertson, Kampf or Jarnkrok, to say nothing of Cowan. There’s just a glut; way too many NHL forwards.
The point of this exercise isn’t to pin down exactly what Toronto’s bottom six is going to be, but to highlight how effective it could be, and how many directions they could go to build it in the image the coach and GM want.
They don’t know what they’ll get from everyone, and some will have down years. But with all those options, they should be able to make a few good bets.
And if they do, the detractors will finally get what they’ve been after. Less attribute points clustered at the top of the lineup, and more contributors throughout. It will be a team much more in the image of the St. Louis Blues that Berube won a Cup with, and it’s not hard to see there being games where in the final minutes some depth guys get the nod if the top guys haven’t brought it.
Having to earn the good opportunities is a concept the Leafs’ top-six has yet to be confronted with.
The Leafs are going to be a curious case study, in that their offence should in theory decline a great deal without Marner. And it likely will. But they’re shaped to try to generate goals differently, and in a way that holds up when the calendar flips to May.
But October comes first. And if this depth is finally going to matter more, they need to be better than what’s been there. Because if they’re not, the team won’t even get a chance to answer the question about how they’d perform in the warmer spring weeks.
from Sportsnet.ca
via i9bet
No comments:
Post a Comment