1 week Ago
OTTAWA — An unstoppable power play, edge in goal and contributions from unlikely sources such as Max Domi and Simon Benoit have the Toronto Maple Leafs on the verge of the second round. Here’s what else has caught my eye. 1.
A suffocating top pair The underlying numbers for Jake McCabe and Chris Tanev in this series are really interesting and revealing. Advertisement The Senators have doubled the Leafs in both shots (18-9) and shot attempts (46-22). Zoom in a little further, and here’s what’s important: The Leafs have allowed a total of five high-danger shot attempts over the 45 minutes that McCabe and Tanev have been out there.
Five — of 46. In other words, the Sens are getting next to no juicy opportunities with the Leafs’ top pair out there. And more crucially, zero goals.
The Leafs have outscored the Sens 1-0 in McCabe-Tanev minutes. Related: Tim Stützle, Ottawa’s best offensive player, has yet to score in three games and has only an assist. 2.
An unlikely shot-blocking leader The Leafs have blocked 67 (!) shots in three games. The team leader is not who you might think. It’s not Tanev, in other words.
It’s not even McCabe. It’s Morgan Rielly, who has turned aside nine shots. This follows a late-season trend: From March 1 until the end of the regular season, Rielly also led the Leafs in blocks, with 48 over 23 games — 10 more than the next closest Leaf, Tanev.
3. Subtle dominance from the captain It hasn’t felt like an overly dominant series from Auston Matthews. His dominance has been more subtle than that, but it’s there.
In Game 3, Matthews came out and scored on the first shift of the third period to give the Leafs a lead. He then set up Simon Benoit’s overtime winner when he beat Shane Pinto on the draw. That was one of 13 wins, on 20 tries, for Matthews in the faceoff circle.
He also threw three hits and the Leafs, eventually, won his line’s minutes against a difficult Pinto-led unit (57 percent expected goals). Matthews still doesn’t feel like the inevitable scorer he was last season, but he’s generating opportunities, leading the Leafs with 11 shots on 23 shot attempts in three games. Physically, he looks as good as he has all season, moving with less apparent restriction (albeit with a shot that’s not as potent as usual).
Advertisement He leads all Leaf forwards this series in blocked shots (six) and takeaways (three) and trails only Bobby McMann in hits (nine). Matthews has lined up for a team-high 58 faceoffs and won 60 percent of them, also tops on the team. That includes 17 wins on 25 draws in the defensive zone, a cool 68 percent success rate.
His line, with Mitch Marner and Matthew Knies, still has room to grow. The Leafs have been in the offensive zone for only 33 percent of Matthews’ even-strength minutes. That’s down from over 41 percent in the regular season.
They can still spend a lot more time down there — and generate a lot more in the process. 4. Sharing the load One curious development in this series has come from the coaching staff: It’s spreading things around almost evenly.
On defence, all three pairs are basically playing the same minutes at even strength: In the regular season, Mike Van Ryn, the assistant coach who runs the defence, would often swap Benoit out for Rielly on offensive zone faceoffs for obvious reasons. He’s done a lot less of that in this series. Benoit and Oliver Ekman-Larsson have been sent out for 14 O-zone draws, just behind Rielly-Brandon Carlo (16) for tops on the team.
Rielly and Ekman-Larsson have shared the ice for only seven such draws at even strength so far. It was a similar story for the forwards in Game 3. All four lines played almost evenly.
The Matthews’ group led the way with almost 10 minutes, the newly invented trio of McMann, Domi and Max Pacioretty logged 8:25, followed by 8:22 for the John Tavares group. The fourth line of Steven Lorentz, Scott Laughton and Calle Järnkrok played eight minutes. 5.
That fourth line The Lorentz-Laughton-Järnkrok unit, a late-season revelation, has played a valuable role. Craig Berube has given it the quicksand treatment, burying it in defensive zone draws with the knowledge that it will keep things square. That was especially true in Game 3 when the group lined up for a team-high five defensive zone draws and none at the other end.
Success for the line is really about, well, having nothing happen for the most part. And that’s how it’s gone: One goal for the Leafs, one goal for the Sens in 25 minutes. Shot attempts are 20-19 in favour of the Leafs.
That usage spares Matthews and Tavares-led groups from having to dig out from down there. Advertisement Berube is deploying the line just as his predecessor, Sheldon Keefe, used to deploy a Kämpf-led fourth line to sometimes great effects. Laughton’s fit on the unit has marginalized Kämpf, who has yet to play in this series.
6. Max Pacioretty’s debut He looked a little rusty and wasn’t moving too quickly, but Pacioretty still made his presence felt in the game by throwing a team-high seven hits (even with McMann) in his 12 1/2 minutes. That feels like part of why Pacioretty should play in front of Nick Robertson.
He can still affect the game when he’s not scoring. That and the experience and potential for offence. 7.
Low shots Just a weird stat worth noting: Though he leads the team with 6 points in the series, and has played well, especially on the power play, Marner has landed just two shots on goal in three games. He scored on one of them. 8.
William Nylander has yet to heat up The Leafs’ top playoff performer in recent years hasn’t gotten it going yet, which is a good sign for a team that’s up 3-0. Nylander does have 4 points in the series, three of them coming on the power play. He has zero goals and only one assist at five-on-five.
(Nylander led the Leafs with 24 five-on-five goals during the regular season.) He looked a little out of sorts in Game 3. He took a tripping penalty that led to a goal, landed just one shot on goal, and generally looked frustrated, smashing his stick on the goal at the end of the first period.
The under-the-hood stuff for his line, with Tavares and Pontus Holmberg, has been positive, as it was in the regular season. But it’s clear, still, that Holmberg isn’t the right guy to help Tavares and Nylander along on offence. Tavares, too, has yet to score a five-on-five goal in the series.
He and Nylander have combined for one high-danger shot attempt at five-on-five in three games. Advertisement What the Leafs coaching staff has to sort out, still, especially as they move ahead, potentially, into the second round, is who should play there, with Tavares and Nylander. It’s probably worth getting Pacioretty time there in Game 4, if only to see if that’s an option for the second round.
The other benefit of doing that is it would allow Holmberg to slide down and push Domi out of the 3C gig. It was Domi’s line (and Domi who was beaten up the ice) that gave up that 2-2 third-period goal in Game 3 — on the heels of an offensive zone faceoff. McMann is the other natural candidate.
However, he’s gone 14 straight games without a goal and has struggled to make an impact in his first postseason. — Stats and research courtesy of Natural Stat Trick, Evolving Hockey and Hockey Reference. (Top photo: Marc DesRosiers / Imagn Images).
