Has it really been four-and-a-half years since Brendan Shanahan was hired in Toronto?
Yes, yes it has. Hard to believe.
Equally hard to believe is just how much has broken right for the franchise in that time.
Shanahan has done a good job, don’t get me wrong. He has made difficult decisions and hired bright people and used ownership’s vast resources in new, innovative ways. But the Maple Leafs have also won a series of small lotteries — not just the obvious big one that landed Auston Matthews first overall in 2016.
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Few organizations flip around this dramatically this quickly, going from a laughingstock to contender in the course of a few years. In doing so, they’ve rocketed past teams like Buffalo in short order.
It’s been a bit odd trying to chronicle it all with an unbiased, critical eye. The Leafs went from making a host of ill-advised decisions over and over between 2008 and 2014 to making mostly smart, sane ones again and again, abruptly reversing course.
They haven’t been perfect. But they’ve been savvy enough — and fortunate enough — to emerge out of the JFJ/Burke/Nonis ashes as one of the best teams in the NHL, one full of the high-end, young talent necessary to win in today’s league. And they’ve done so without hardly any of the eyesore contracts that are holding back a lot of their competition.
For all their warts on the ice, the Leafs were the seventh best team in the league last year — tied in points with the eventual Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals — and they added John Tavares on July 1.
It’s not a stretch to say that this very well could be their year. (Or years, should they succeed in keeping the core together long term.)
Let’s take a closer look at where the Leafs are at, 24 days from the opening of one of their most anticipated training camps ever.
Biggest on-ice question
Yeah, it’s the D.
Let’s face it, the Leafs’ blueline has been a problem for a long, long time. Certainly as long as I’ve covered them. The 2018-19 group, however, is a long way from the franchise’s Holzer-filled past.
I’ve argued this in the (recent) past, but sometimes the analysis of Toronto’s defence core that’s out there paints too dire a picture. This isn’t a bottom five or a bottom 10 blueline. And there’s a reasonable argument to be made they’ll be better than last season thanks to (a) Roman Polak no longer playing 18 minutes a night and (b) some internal development from players like Travis Dermott. There’s reason for optimism.
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I’m very intrigued to see how the fact that Kyle Dubas is now general manager impacts things, too. We know he believes in brains over brawn philosophically and has pushed to have skilled puck-movers on the back end everywhere he’s been.
We also know he loved several of his unheralded Marlies defencemen — and that worked out pretty well for the AHL club last season.
The Leafs have kicked tires on some outside options on D in trades and free agency. But they may well end up going with what they have, believing a cast of relatively unknown commodities at the NHL level — Justin Holl? Calle Rosen? — can push for jobs and improve their depth.
Whether that can work isn’t Toronto’s only question heading into camp. But it’s definitely the biggest one.
Depth chart analysis
Centre: I don’t think there’s much question the Leafs have one of the strongest centre groups in the league and in franchise history. Auston Matthews and John Tavares are likely two of the best 15 players in the league. The only non-Leafs centres who have scored more goals than Nazem Kadri the last two years are Malkin, Crosby, McDavid, Eric Staal and Tyler Seguin.
All three of Matthews, Tavares and Kadri are capable of anchoring a top line and facing top competition; the fact one will get sheltered minutes should make Toronto’s offence incredibly difficult to stop.
Where there are questions is beyond the big three. Mike Babcock has given a big vote of confidence to newcomer Par Lindholm in the No. 4 spot, but the soon-to-be 27-year-old remains an unknown commodity having never played higher than the SHL. (He was in Sweden’s third division in 2013.) I’d expect the Leafs to add another depth piece down the middle on a tryout or bargain contract to give them a backup option if Lindholm doesn’t excel in preseason.
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Left wing: The Leafs depth on the left side will be much different with the losses of James van Riemsdyk, Leo Komarov and Matt Martin. There’s some addition by subtraction there with the latter two, however, and van Riemsdyk typically was playing on a sheltered third line in limited minutes at even strength.
The good news is Andreas Johnsson looked more than ready for promotion from the minors in the NHL and AHL playoffs. Even if he slots in as the third option behind Zach Hyman and Patrick Marleau, they should be fine on LW in the top nine. Beyond that, free agent Tyler Ennis, Josh Leivo and even Connor Brown can give Toronto solid minutes there, when needed.
And Carl Grundstrom awaits a potential late-season call-up should he show well with the Marlies.
Right wing: The only place the Leafs are nearly as deep as centre is on the right side. Mitch Marner and William Nylander give Toronto one of the most skilled looks there, with both young players capable of driving a line and coming off consecutive 60-plus point seasons. Brown and Kasperi Kapanen will then battle for third-line duties, which could mean taking on tough defensive assignments alongside Kadri.
The fact Nylander, Brown and Kapanen are so often thrown into media-driven trade speculation is the result of the Leafs’ wealth of talent there — although there isn’t exactly much behind them if you look further down the depth chart. Leivo would likely be the fill-in option, in case of injury, but he is available on the trade market.
Left defence: I’m not sure how many pieces we’ve run arguing the case that Morgan Rielly is a No. 1 defenceman, but the most memorable one was here. Both he and Jake Gardiner broke through with 52-point campaigns in 2017-18, but it was Rielly who handled the harder minutes and helped offset the late-season decline of greying partner Ron Hainsey.
Travis Dermott‘s strong showing in 37 games, meanwhile, earned him a full-time spot in the NHL heading into this camp.
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If injuries hit, the Leafs have no shortage of fill-in options, with all three of Andreas Borgman, Calle Rosen and Martin Marincin likely capable of handling third-pair minutes.
The options are plentiful enough that it’s not unreasonable to wonder if one potential solution to the Leafs problems on the right side (see below) might be helped by shifting a left shot D over to their off side — even if Babcock has long been reluctant to do so.
Right defence: The weakest link on the roster — and it’s not particularly close. Ron Hainsey, Nikita Zaitsev and Connor Carrick all struggled at various points of last season, and none of them are great options in tough minutes on a first pair. The problem is that there’s a lack of right-shot D leaguewide, with only 70 playing at least 50 games last season (40 per cent of the total).
Moving a lefty over remains one potential solution, given Rielly and Dermott have spent time there in the past. The other two options — Justin Holl and Igor Ozhiganov — are big time wild cards.
It continues to feel like Dubas will need to swing a deal — at the deadline or in the years thereafter — to properly address this particular hole.
Goal: Since joining the Leafs, Frederik Andersen is behind only Edmonton’s Cam Talbot in starts, with 132. He sits tied for 12th in save percentage (minimum 50 games played) and seventh in goals saved above average (minimum 2,000 minutes played).
He has had his ups and downs — and his workload may be too much for the big Dane — but Andersen has been a perfectly fine No. 1 the past two seasons. Not dominant but not a drag, either.
What will be intriguing this year is if he gets some competition for starts. It has been clear the past two seasons that neither Jhonas Enroth or Curtis McElhinney was brought in to do more than make token starts on the second night of a back-to-back, but that could change if AHL goalie of the year Garret Sparks is given the backup role out of camp.
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At the very least, given Andersen’s struggles late in the year and the playoffs, it makes sense to dial him back to the 55-60 start range and give Sparks an opportunity to either build up his trade value or his case as a potential successor. Curtis McElhinney remains under contract, and has played as well as could be expected, but at 35, he may end up battling Calvin Pickard to be the Leafs’ third-stringer in the minors.
Special Teams
Power play: The Leafs have scored 8.77 goals per 60 minutes on the man advantage the last two seasons, which ranks first in the NHL. Their 24.3 per cent power-play conversion rate is second to only Pittsburgh over that time frame.
And they added John Tavares, who is top 10 in power-play goals the last five years.
So you won’t want to take a penalty against Toronto.
The one wrinkle is that James van Riemsdyk and Tyler Bozak were both big contributors to the Leafs’ success 5-on-4. Their departures in free agency will necessitate major changes to the PP configuration, something that has no doubt kept assistant coach Jim Hiller up at night this summer.
One thing he’ll have to settle on is if the Leafs are better off stacking one PP unit — Matthews, Tavares, Nylander, Marner, Rielly? — or trying to have two dangerous ones that offer different looks for opposition PKs to adjust to. Something to keep an eye on in the early days of training camp.
Penalty kill: I haven’t loved the Leafs’ PK the last two seasons — or the personnel they’ve used — but it has gotten results. At least in the macro sense.
Toronto’s 82-per-cent kill rate puts them tied for eighth when down a man in the league. In all, they’ve given up just 87 goals while shorthanded over the 184 games, a rate of only one every second game.
You dig deeper though, and there are more troubling trends. Per minute, the Leafs’ PK allows more shot attempts than all but six other teams. And they’re third last in the NHL in terms of expected goals against per 60 while shorthanded.
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And they’re not a very dangerous attacking team when down a man, having scored only 10 goals over the last two seasons.
I’m interested to see what Babcock changes on the PK this year. Three of his eight most-used killers are gone (Roman Polak, Leo Komarov and Dominic Moore), and they haven’t exactly replaced them with experienced hands in this department.
Andreas Johnsson certainly fits the profile of a good shorthanded player, and maybe Par Lindholm can help, too. But they’re going to need someone up front who can win draws, and someone on the back end who can take Polak’s minutes and ease the pressure on Hainsey, who absurdly led the entire NHL in shorthanded minutes with four per game.
Using some of their skilled players a little more when down a man makes some sense.
In the pipeline
Centre: There’s not much. Despite flopping in nine games on the fourth line last year, The Goat may rise again simply due to a lack of other options. If the Leafs run into injuries to any one of Matthews, Tavares or Kadri, their most likely course of action would seem to be simply moving Nylander over from the wing.
Beyond The Goat, their call-up options are limited to Adam Brooks, Josh Jooris and Chris Mueller. Which is why it makes sense for Dubas to add another depth option down the middle if he can before the season starts.
Left wing: Carl Grundstrom is the big one, although the organization is keen to give him big minutes in his first full AHL season and develop the areas of his game that need work. Trevor Moore is at the point where I think he could handle depth minutes at the NHL level, if necessary, and Mason Marchment is getting closer to that level, too. Colin Greening, Pierre Engvall and Dmytro Timashov round out the left-shot options from the Marlies.
Right wing: The Leafs are thinner on the right side when you dig down beyond their top four options at the NHL level. Jeremy Bracco couldn’t crack the Marlies playoff lineup, so his odds of getting NHL games this season feel slim. And while 33-year-old vet Adam Cracknell has more than 200 games NHL experience, you’d imagine the Leafs would rather recall one of the centres or lefties to fill a forward hole instead.
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Left defence: The Leafs are deeper here on both current third-pair options and future help. In addition to the previously mentioned Marlies options like Marincin, Rosen and Borgman, there’s 2018 first-rounder Rasmus Sandin, Fedor Gordeev and Andrew Nielsen. It’ll probably take an injury for any of the first three to factor in at the NHL level, and the latter trio are all still in need of a lot of development. (In Nielsen’s case, his window may be closing quickly.)
Right defence: The big name is Timothy Liljegren. But having just turned 19 only at the end of April, he is nowhere near ready for the next level — a shame given the Leafs’ need at the position. The veteran options include Holl and Ozhiganov, who’ll be battling for a seventh defenceman spot at camp, as well as Jordan Subban, Vinny LoVerde and Jesper Lindgren. Add in prospects Sean Durzi and Eemeli Rasanen, and it feels like they’ll get help from at least a couple of these options in the coming years.
Goal: Calvin Pickard could be the Marlies starter this season, although he is being offered around the league in a trade. If he’s moved, those duties could fall to McElhinney, who would need to clear waivers to be sent down. There’s also Kasimir Kaskisuo kicking around, which is a bit strange given his results to date. Eamon McAdam is another pro project in the system and perhaps destined for St. John’s. (This guy is excited about that.)
On the way, meanwhile, is American world junior starter Joseph Woll, who represents the future backstop for the Marlies once his college career winds down.
Salary cap watch
How much time do you have?
This post from last month provides my stab at the most in-depth answer to where the Leafs’ salary cap situation sits. The Coles Notes version is: After William Nylander is signed, things are somewhat tight — at least if they want to completely avoid bonus overages that would cause cap issues in 2019-20.
Assuming Nylander gets something just over $6-million and they carry a 22-man roster, Toronto has roughly $7-million to play with before bonuses come into play. Matthews and Marner have a combined $3.7-million there that they should earn, barring injury, which cuts down Dubas’ wiggle room to a little more than $3-million.
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That’s without going into long-term injured reserve using Nathan Horton’s contract, which appears to be the course of action the Leafs will take.
They could certainly create more cap space via trade. Or they could eat into theirs by signing, say, another centre to challenge Lindholm for the fourth-line role.
All that to say, the Leafs don’t have any real cap problems. There’s flexibility — both with Horton’s deal and the bonus overage — to add, if a great deal falls in their lap. They’ll also accrue additional cap space by the trade deadline if they sit on that $3-million and change through the early portions of the season.
Final assessment
The Leafs are one of the five best teams in hockey for the first time in a very long time.
Expectations are finally on this franchise again — and there’ll be real pressure to win come April. Step 1 will be trying to avoid matching up with Tampa or Boston in Round 1, which means attempting to win the Atlantic Division.
That should be within their reach if things go according to plan.
Main photo: Carlos Osorio/Toronto Star via Getty Images
