This was the salary breakdown by line combination for the Toronto Maple Leafs in Dallas on Wednesday:
Line 4: $4.5 million
Line 3: $6 million
Line 2: $12.8 million
Line 1: $35.7 million (!)
We don’t need to dig too deeply to research this one: That is the most expensive line in NHL history, with the first, sixth and 12th biggest cap hits in the league all playing together.
How did it go?
William Nylander scored a couple of goals (including an empty netter) in a 5-3 win over one of the best teams in the Western Conference, so the top-line outcome was positive. But overall the trio of Nylander with Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner really didn’t look right.
They played 10:32 together at even strength, gave up the only two five-on-five goals against, were outshot 8-6, and were on the wrong end of the scoring chance battle (47 percent) on the night.
The Stars, understandably, hard-matched those three, using their top defence pair of Miro Heiskanen and Esa Lindell on most shifts, and that was part of the issue. The other factors were likely that those three hadn’t played much together — just 22 minutes at five-on-five prior to the game in Dallas — and that their overlapping skill sets meant they were tripping over each other a bit.
All three of Nylander, Matthews and Marner like to handle the puck and lead the breakout through the neutral zone, for example. Nylander and Matthews, meanwhile, are prolific shooters, and finding enough rubber for them to chuck at the net is going to be a challenge if they’re all together.
Nylander had three shots in his even-strength minutes in the game, while Matthews had two and Marner one. Altogether, they attempted only nine shots at five-on-five, which is well down from an average of 13.2 per game throughout the rest of this season.
Marner generating one-third as many opportunities as normal isn’t great, considering he scores on 15 percent of his shots. Matthews having his attempts cut in half also isn’t going to work, given he scores on even more of his.
It was only one game, and it was against a good team, but it’s hard to see this working long-term. If you’re going to put 41 percent of your cap space on one forward line, you need it to completely dominate — and not just offensively.
And I didn’t even get into what it did to the other lines, especially John Tavares’ unit, which was completely overwhelmed all night.
I’m all for experimenting, but this felt like a weird one for Craig Berube to pull out 32 games into the season. When you’re down a goal late in a game, sure, load them up. But as a regular exercise, it simply isn’t going to work.
Onto some other observations I’ve picked up this week …
2. Trivia time: What are the league’s other most expensive lines?
Second is the Lightning’s top trio: Jake Guentzel ($9 million), Brayden Point ($9.5 million) and Nikita Kucherov ($9.5 million) = $28 million
Rounding out the top five:
Colorado: Artturi Lehkonen ($4.5 million), Nathan MacKinnon ($12.6 million) and Mikko Rantanen ($9.25 million) = $26.4 million
Florida: Carter Verhaeghe ($4.17 million), Aleksander Barkov ($10 million) and Matthew Tkachuk ($9.5 million) = $23.7 million
Edmonton: Ryan Nugent-Hopkins ($5.13 million), Connor McDavid ($12.5 million) and Zach Hyman ($5.5 million) = $23.1 million
The cheapest first line around the league?
The Chicago Blackhawks at $7.45 million: Nick Foligno ($4.5 million), Connor Bedard ($950,000) and Ryan Donato ($2 million).
My thanks to PuckPedia for this data.
3. The Leafs have become incredibly efficient with the lead
After Wednesday’s win, Toronto is 10-1-0 (seventh best in the NHL) when leading after one period and a league-best 16-0-0 when leading after two.
In the last four seasons under Sheldon Keefe, the Leafs were 13th and 16th in those stats, including blowing a lead entering the second period 14.5 percent of the time.
Better goaltending is part of that, but this team’s ability to lock games down has been elite.
4. They continue to get off to slow starts
Period 1 was ugly in Dallas. The Leafs were outshot 16-4 and Dallas owned 94 percent of the expected goals.
Toronto is 23rd in the NHL in goals scored in the first period and has been outscored 26-24 in the opening frame. That’s a tough way to win for a team that has struggled to generate offence most of the season.
5. The penalty kill remains an unsung hero
The Leafs went a perfect 4 for 4 when down a man in Dallas, bumping their overall percentage to 82.7 percent, good for seventh in the NHL. And that’s definitely not all goaltending.
The Leafs’ PK still allows a high volume of attempts when short-handed (20th in the NHL), but they jump to 13th when you cut out blocked and missed shots, a nod to their prowess at getting in lanes, led by Chris Tanev.
They rank seventh in the quality of the chances they give up, according to expected goals, where they’ve improved from 7.5 per 60 last season (13th) at four-on-five to just 6.8 this season.
The Leafs’ PK has been horrible in the playoffs in the Matthews era, killing just 74 percent of power plays and allowing 0.75 goals per game going back to 2017. This is a change that should help come April.
6. The Bobby McMann story continues to grow
I somehow came across this tweet after watching McMann rifle home yet another nice goal as part of a suddenly hot third line:
Bobby McMann, who scored in today’s #FlamesDevCamp scrimmage, talks about attending camp on a try-out agreement and how his game has developed over the past couple of years. https://t.co/vjKrURZEyo
— Calgary Flames (@NHLFlames) July 8, 2018
McMann’s back story is really, really unusual for a player who’s contributing at the level he is now. He attended training camp with a bunch of teams (at least three by my count) while in the NCAA and didn’t get a contract offer until April 2020, when the Marlies took a flier on him with a two-year AHL-only deal.
The day he was signed in Toronto, the Marlies also added someone named Gordie Green. Most of the “coverage” of their additions that day was about their great hockey names. And Green got more pub than McMann, who at that point was 24 years old and coming off a season where he’d produced only 20 points in 32 games as the captain of a mediocre Colgate team.
The Marlies then sent him down to the ECHL’s Wichita Thunder for most of his first pro season, where he didn’t exactly dominate. (Green narrowly outscored him.) But the next season in the AHL, McMann broke through, piling up 24 goals in 61 games to get on the NHL club’s radar.
Now he’s a legit 20-plus goal scorer for the Leafs on a bargain of a contract.
I didn’t see him play in college, but still it’s a bit confusing why he slipped through so many organizations given his size, speed and hustle. That said, he’s an undrafted player who came through the AJHL, so being a late bloomer via that route isn’t unheard of.
What a great example of found money for the organization, though. And a development win for the Marlies.
7. Don’t trade Robertson
Hey, I saw the jokes on social media. Nick Robertson finally breaks through with a couple of goals and 4 points in his last two games, and people are talking about his trade value going up.
But with what he makes ($875,000) and how much the Leafs are struggling to get offence down the lineup, to me it doesn’t make any sense to flip him for a middling draft pick. I know a lot of people in the market are frustrated with how his season has gone, but he’s injury insurance and may well get back on track now that he’s got the monkey off his back.
It certainly helps that Max Domi is heating up, too.
Plus, look at Robertson’s overall stat line: No team around the league is trading much for a small winger who has 6 points in 25 games. Keep him and cross your fingers that he gets back to what he was last season.
8. Praise for the Brick Woll
I made it this far without mentioning Joseph Woll, so shame on me.
Berube didn’t sound very happy with his team after the win in Dallas. The one exception was the play of his goalie, who was fantastic in keeping Toronto level when it was getting hemmed in early.
Woll is 9-4-0 with a .918 save percentage, which is fifth-best among goalies with at least 10 appearances this season. The only goalies ahead of him are injured teammate Anthony Stolarz and a bunch of Vezina candidates like Connor Hellebuyck.
Woll is up to 16th in the NHL in goals saved above expected, but if you adjust that to a per-game rate, he jumps to 10th. He’s preventing roughly half a goal per every 60 minutes played singlehandedly, putting him ahead of star goalies like Juuse Saros and Jake Oettinger.
9. How much should Woll play?
Woll has such a great personality and work ethic; you can see why he’s so popular in the dressing room. The only question for the 26-year-old is going to be his durability. Woll’s never played more than 32 games as a pro, and even in the USHL and NCAA, the workload often wasn’t much heavier than that.
Rather than just give the backup only the back-to-back games, as has become standard practice on many teams, I would lean toward starting Woll only two of every three games. That still extrapolates to a heavy, 55-game workload over a full season, but it will allow him to start only a max of twice a week most of the time.
If that means the Leafs lose a few more games while Stolarz is out, so be it. Giving Woll a gradual workload increase and keeping him healthy is more important than testing his suitability to be a 60-game guy down the road.
10. Murray’s long-awaited return
What a great story Matt Murray is, even to get to this point.
He’s expected to get one of the starts, either in Buffalo on Friday or at home against the Islanders on Saturday. It’ll be his first NHL action since April 2, 2023, a span of 627 days, during which he had major surgery and then has excelled with the Marlies so far this year (4-1-2 record with a .931 save percentage, including a shutout of his former minor-league team earlier this week).
If you missed it, Jonas had a great piece on Murray’s journey here at the end of last season.
Thanks for reading. I’m trying a few different formats for columns these days, and this might be one style that catches on.
And Happy Holidays.
(Photo: Sam Hodde / Getty Images)
