What a week it’s been for the Toronto Maple Leafs, eh?
Mike Babcock finally listened to us! In scratching every semblance of grit and dead weight, the Toronto Maple Leafs iced perhaps the most balanced and talented lineup the team has seen since the 2004-05 lockout.
So, now that the Leafs are finally living up to their potential, thanks to their wonderful new additions, it begs the question:
Does the emergence of Travis Dermott make the Leafs able to contend for a cup this year?
Let’s hear what the EIL staff had to say.
Mike Stephens
As Travis Dermott shatters every expectation we had for him with each passing game, I absolutely am of the belief that the Leafs can contend for a cup this year.
And yet, there are a few caveats.
Although it may be difficult to topple a powerhouse like Tampa, the Leafs possess all the necessary tools to do so. They boast a ridiculously deep forward group, a bonafide elite goaltender, and now a mobile backend capable of actually holding a lead.
In fact, the only area truly in need of improvements is at fourth line centre.
Can you imagine this current Leafs roster with Brian Boyle at 4C? The thought is borderline erotic. The only downside here, however, is there appear to be no sizeable upgrades available on the trade block.
Frankly, the Leafs would be better suited to just call up Miro Aaltonen from the Marlies to see if he could be the answer. As of today, Toronto currently sits in a playoff spot, with a 15-point lead over the next closest team.
What is there to lose?
Aaltonen is talented, fast, and there’s no harm in giving him a shot to see what you have. Regardless, come April, this team is poised to make a significant run.
Let’s enjoy it, folks.
I was about 15 years old when I started writing articles on the Toronto Maple Leafs.
I had so much to say, but nobody to share it with. I had started my own little blog called puckheadsunited.blogspot.com, and decided to write little pieces about the Toronto Maple Leafs and post them online. Of course this blog never went anywhere, but it was a nice little placeholder for my content.
Anyways, today I was looking through my Facebook memories and came across an article I wrote two years ago today on the Leafs logo change. This was my first so-called “hype” article that I had written, and it was smack-dab in the middle of the Leafs’ brutal, yet rewarding 2015-16 season in which they finished dead last.
The article essentially talked about how the logo change meant so much more than simply a new picture on the front of the Leafs jersey. But two years ago today, we knew nothing about what was to come. Let’s revisit what’s taken place since they revealed their new face of the franchise.
Exhibit A: A New Way of Drafting
The 2015-16 season ended, and as funny as this may sound, many Leafs fans couldn’t be happier. I mean, come on. The team had Leo Komarov playing on the top line and about half of their lineup included veterans on one year contracts. P.A. Parenteau, Shawn Matthias, and Daniel Winnik to name a few. Any rational fan with even the tiniest bit of hockey sense knew that this team was going nowhere, especially considering they didn’t have a core of sorts.
The farm was stocked though, which was something Leafs fans weren’t used to. They had Mitch Marner, William Nylander, and Travis Dermott highlighting their top prospects, rather than Tyler Biggs, Jesse Blacker, and Stuart Percy.
And that wasn’t even including the biggest apple of them all.
On April 30th, 2016, the draft lottery took place and the Leafs won it, earning the right to the first overall pick, and therefore the right to select now-number one centre Auston Matthews, who spent his draft year playing in Switzerland among men and experienced pros. And with a final total of 46 points in 36 games, he fit right in.
Exhibit B: New Management
The Leafs selected Matthews. So now what? The 2016-17 season hadn’t started, for all we knew Matthews could have been a massive bust and the Leafs could have been back at square one.
Instead, the Leafs would have their best offensive season as a team. Six different players would tally over 50 points and they would make the playoffs in a full season for the first time since 2004.
Not only that, new head coach Mike Babcock would work with players who had rocky development instead of throw them into his dog house, and they would have career years. This would include Nazem Kadri, who would score 31 goals and total over 60 points for a career high. Another example is Jake Gardiner, a notorious scapegoat who would put up over 40 points.
Kadri was a seventh overall pick in 2009 by the Maple Leafs yet took seven years to truly break out. Why is this? Oh yeah, because under the old management Kadri was constantly being juggled between the AHL and the NHL and any time he would make a mistake, he would see demoted minutes and would be left to work out his issues on his own.
Exhibit C: The Concept of Patience
Let’s head back to May of 2015 real quick. Everybody remembers Babcock’s press conference after being hired as head coach, right? He preached patience and warned fans that there would be pain, but that it was all part of a process.
The Leafs tried a tactic opposite to this back in 2008 when Brian Burke was GM. They immediately dealt draft picks and prospects in exchange for stars such as Phil Kessel, Dion Phaneuf, and Joffrey Lupul. Did this work out? Absolutely not.
The Leafs could have easily dealt Nylander or Marner for stars such as Shea Weber, but instead, they took the patient route and let their rookies develop.
Now, they have almost an entire home grown core and are about to make the playoffs for the second year in a row, while teams such as the Buffalo Sabres are still struggling to stay out of the basement, despite starting their own rebuild years before the Leafs did.
So, what did we learn from this?
The logo change wasn’t just a minor transaction to forget about within a week. The new logo symbolized a newer, better, different way of running the ship. New management with a new plan and new bodies. When I wrote the piece similar to this back in 2016, nothing was confirmed. Nobody could have guessed the Leafs would be in this position right away. But as I’m writing this exactly two years later, things are looking up. The new logo was the turn of the tide. It officially symbolized a new way of running things of which would hopefully turn this team into a contender, and so far, it’s paying off.
Trust the process, it will all pay off in the end.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have won four games in a row.
It is not a coincidence that the Toronto Maple Leafs have won these games while employing a new set of lines.
By adding Kasperi Kapanen and Travis Dermott into the lineup in exchange for Matt Martin and Roman Polak, the Leafs are way, way faster. By giving non-fourth line minutes to Connor Brown: Way faster. Even when Holl came in for Hainsey: way faster.
Speed kills.
The Leafs were already arguably the fastest team in the NHL. Their slowest players are probably Polak, Hainsey and Martin, and with the kids in the lineup, you can really see the difference. They just skate everyone into the ground.
Now, we’re not going to be seeing Ron Hainsey out of the lineup permanently any time soon, but that is OK – he brings other things besides speed. But if we’re done with Matt Martin and Roman Polak, which I don’t see how Babcock can insist on playing them anymore, then the Leafs are back to being, for sure, the fastest team in hockey.
They Earned It
Kasperi Kapanen and Travis Dermott should never play a single AHL game ever again. They are way too good, way to fast to not be in the NHL. Permanently.
Even though he’s by all rights a legit top-nine guy, Kapanen and Komarov combine to make – by far – the fastest and best fourth line in the NHL. It is insane.
With Dermott, the Leafs suddenly have one of the fastest, most mobile defense corps in the NHL. Rielly, Gardiner, Zaitsev and Dermott are all +++ skaters. Connor Carrick isn’t half bad either.
This kind of speed is something other teams can’t compensate for. Just about every strategy has an equal and opposite counter strategy. Not speed. The NHL’s obstruction rules make it impossible to prevent fast players from taking advantage. It might seem like a small thing, with only a couple new players, but at the NHL level, that is a pretty big edge.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have won four games in a row, and the last two especially were impressive, with 55% and 62% possession ratings, respectively.
At this point, I don’t think it’s ridiculous to consider the Leafs among the best teams in the NHL, among the top three or four Stanley Cup Contenders and the Tampa Bay Lightning’s equal.
And it gets even better tonight, because my favorite player, and one of the best skaters in the entire world, Morgan Rielly, will be back.
stats from naturalstattrick.com
BOSTON – For Toronto Maple Leafs fans who watched and cheered as their club reeled off four consecutive victories, scoring in bunches and clamping down at the business end, Saturday’s trip to Boston provided a cold wake-up call.
“We were on top of them,” asserted the ageless Zdeno Chara, victorious in career game No. 1,400.
In getting outworked, outscored, out-chanced, out-goaltended, outmuscled, out-disciplined and out-everything-else’d against a member of the NHL’s true elite, the Leafs and their fathers flew home late with one to grow on.
The Bruins defeated Toronto 4-1 and have now captured standings points in a ridiculous 20 of their past 21 outings. The final score actually does the visitors a favour.
Even the lone Leafs goal came off a Bruin’s blade.
“There’s not a lot of holes in their game,” Toronto defenceman Morgan Rielly confirmed. “One of the hottest teams in hockey. They’ve been playing well. They’re doing everything right.”
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Patrice Bergeron, arguably the most complete hockey player on Earth, was the early beneficiary of a fierce Bruins forecheck, gathering a Danton Heinen pass, and simultaneously snapping the puck top-corner past Frederik Andersen and breaking Toronto’s shutout streak at 146:46.
Mitchell Marner tied the game on the power play when his slap-pass ticked off Charles McAvoy’s stick for an own-goal, and Toronto was fortunate to escape a zippy first period tied.
“After one, you hadn’t been great, it’s time for a pushback. We didn’t have a pushback,” Babcock said. “They skated us.”
In one furious Period 2 sequence, Tyler Bozak was robbed on the power-play by Tuukka Rask’s back-diving stick save, and a James van Riemsdyk tip pinged a post. The Bruins then drove the play the other way on the kill and drew a penalty of their own.
Relentless.
“We talked about that,” Bergeron said. “We said it’s a type of hockey you’re going to see later in the year and, you know, heavy teams that can skate and that are obviously going to be in your face.”
As Boston poured on pressure with both its backcheck and forecheck, clogging the neutral zone like Taco Bell clogs plumbing, those missed empty nets and clanged posts felt increasingly like opportunities lost.
“The game is fair. I thought they were quicker, better, executed, had more players going than we did tonight, and it showed,” Babcock said. “They play fast, they play right, they have a good pace to them.”
Antsy to join a winning team after sitting six games to nurse his upper-body injury, Toronto’s Rielly had an eventful re-entry to the lineup. He had his hands full defending the Bergeron line early, notched his 27th assist on the Marner goal, and made a nice full-body slide on David Pastrnak to bust up a 2-on-1 chance for the Bs.
“Whenever you come back, you’re a little bit cautious,” Rielly admitted. “It can be frustrating the way they close it down. So, credit to them, they did a good job, it’s important we get better tomorrow, we come in on Monday [versus Anaheim] and get back on track.”
Toronto’s other newly healthy top-pair defenceman, Ron Hainsey, endured such a rough go in the second period, he may have half-wished to be back home on the couch with the flu.
A speedy Pastrnak beat Hainsey on a fumbled dump-in and extended his point streak to eight games with a smart wrister.
Hainsey then committed an unnecessary interference penalty away from the play, and the Bruins pounced on the man-advantage when Torey Krug one-timed a blast, giving themselves a two-goal lead that essentially made the final 20 minutes elementary.
The Bruins added an empty-netter and improved to a sturdy 20-1-5 when drawing first blood. They hold a five-point edge over Toronto for the second seed and home-ice in Round 1 of the Atlantic Division playoffs — with four games in hand. They have the league’s best goals-against average and second-best possession metrics.
Was this a potential playoff preview of Round 1? Maybe.
Those footsteps the first-place Tampa Bay Lightning can hear are getting louder by the night, and Saturday’s display proved that Boston is widening the gap on its nearest pursuer.
“No question, we’re chasing them right now and we want to get to where they’re at,” Leafs defenceman Connor Carrick said. “There’s another level of consistency and intensity that we can get to every night.”
Consistency and intensity? Look around the entire league. For the past 90 days, Boston has been the model.
