TORONTO — Back-to-back losses — and ugly back-to-back losses at that — and it’s suddenly a stormy season for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
I have some thoughts!
1. There’s maybe no bigger problem right now for the Leafs than the power play.
The unit has been out of sorts from day one and has scored just 11 percent of the time so far. Three goals on 27 chances to be exact.
The top group has shown the odd sign of life but still isn’t scoring and is missing key opportunities to get the Leafs back in games.
On Thursday night, the Leafs were down 1-0 when they got their first chance against the Blues. Turnovers plagued PP1 and the Leafs got nothing. The Blues scored on their power play a short while later. On their next look, the Leafs held the zone but couldn’t get shots through.
Oliver Ekman-Larsson replaced Morgan Rielly on that top group in no time this fall, and while that’s provided the odd spark, it hasn’t been nearly enough.
It’s not just the end result. The process has been worse this season, clearly. And those 2023-24 numbers include a second-half power-play slide.
| Per 60 mins | 2024-25 | 2023-24 |
|---|---|---|
|
Attempts
|
101
|
119
|
|
Shots
|
57
|
62
|
|
Expected goals
|
7
|
10
|
That’s a decrease in quantity and quality.
After years of power-play meltdowns in the postseason (not to mention second-half collapses), I thought the Leafs should have started the year with two star-balanced units, one that featured Auston Matthews and William Nylander and another centered around Mitch Marner and John Tavares.
I think it’s something they should consider again now. Not only might it freshen things up for a top group that feels stale already, it might also build competition between the two groups.
Perhaps something like:
PPA: Matthews, Nylander, Ekman-Larsson, Max Domi, Matthew Knies
PPB: Marner, Tavares, Rielly, Nick Robertson, Bobby McMann
It’s early, but the pressure is building on first-year assistant Marc Savard to figure this out after the 5-1 loss to St. Louis.
2. What’s most surprising about all the rush chances and defensive breakdowns the Leafs have given up in the last couple of games is who’s often been involved: the Matthews-led first line.
That group, with Marner and Knies, was beaten for three goals in Columbus and surrendered two more against St. Louis, including a failed handoff between Matthews and Jake McCabe that Craig Berube referred to as “lazy hockey” afterward.
The line’s numbers in the last two games are kinda shocking:
- Goals: 0-5
- Shots: 7-13
- Expected goals: 28 percent
It’s not just the Matthews group, either, and it’s greatly perturbed the Leafs coach. “Some of them are mental mistakes, and some of them we gotta be harder, we gotta be more physical killing plays,” Berube said after his first game against his old team.
I do wonder if stellar goaltending from Anthony Stolarz was covering up some warts before the two-game slide.
3. Other than Matthews, the situation at centre feels very unsettled, with no clear path forward that improves things.
Domi has looked increasingly overstretched as a 2C (not surprisingly) and Tavares’ recent deployment and linemates have felt suboptimal. Berube swapped the two of them in the third period Thursday.
It feels like the Leafs are in a tricky spot with Tavares, with two primary questions and no obvious answers:
- How best to use him?
- Who best to play him with?
For the first time in his career, Tavares has an offensive-zone faceoff percentage under 50 percent. He’s been mostly used as a checking line-type centre, lining up for more defensive-zone faceoffs at five-on-five (23) than offensive-zone draws (19).
That hardly feels like the optimal way to deploy Tavares. Not only because of his skill set and linemates, but also because he’s 34 and in his 16th NHL season.
And it began to change against St. Louis, with Tavares drawing more looks on offence while reclaiming, for the third period anyway, his second-line centre spot. In fact, the Leafs scored their only goal versus the Blues following an offensive-zone draw led by Tavares.
The Leafs have actually outscored teams 5-1 at five-on-five with Tavares on the ice, but the process stuff isn’t pretty. Last season, the Leafs mustered 3.1 expected goals per 60 with their then-captain on the ice. This season? That number is sitting at an anemic 1.6.
There’s deployment and linemates.
Tavares lost Nylander as a sidekick after the second game of the season. Up until a mid-game switch on Thursday, his linemates since have been some combination of Robertson, Pontus Holmberg, Max Pacioretty and Steven Lorentz. Robertson and Pacioretty are, like Tavares, shoot-first players, while Holmberg and Lorentz are both limited offensively.
Who’s supposed to be getting Tavares the puck?
And yet it’s unclear what exactly Berube and company should do about it.
Reconnecting Tavares and Nylander (or Tavares and Marner) leaves questions elsewhere, like what to do about Domi and that third-line centre spot.
Drop Domi down, for instance, and who is he playing with? And what’s that line’s function?
This was part of why experimenting, like, for real, with Nylander at centre made so much sense and why abandoning it so quickly did not.
4. I wonder if the Leafs need to think about breaking up Matthews and Marner in the hopes of creating (or trying to create) three balanced lines with a reasonable chance to score and drive play.
I’m just not sure if the puzzle pieces are there to make it work. This group is lacking in legitimate top-nine forwards right now, especially with Calle Järnkrok out and Pacioretty (a question mark already for that kind of role at this stage in his career) hurt.
It’s at least worth noting, too, that Matthews has scored only two five-on-five goals in the first eight games.
Related: He’s shooting 7.7 percent, which would be — by far — the lowest mark of his career.
Matthews’ individual shot and attempt rates are also both up, as are the quantity and quality of chances the Leafs are generating when he’s on the ice.
And yet, the Leafs need that line to produce. This team has scored one or less in three games so far.
5. David Kämpf has been rendered kind of pointless in the way that he’s being deployed.
He’s fallen down the depth chart on the penalty kill and, all of a sudden this season, no longer lines up defensive-zone faceoffs. Kämpf has weirdly lined up for the fewest defensive-zone faceoffs among Leaf regulars this season (12).
His usage there has dropped in half from last season.
Which raises the question of how exactly Kämpf, making $2.4 million on the cap, is supposed to help the Leafs.
—Stats and research courtesy of Natural Stat Trick and Hockey Reference
(Top photo of Mitch Marner: Chris Tanouye / Getty Images)
