In Brad We Trust: Hope for the Toronto Maple Leafs – Part 1
Finally a GM who will tackle the core issues with this team
The root cause of the Leafs’ recent playoff failures is, quite simply, roster construction – i.e., lack of balance through the forward lineup (e.g., inadequate depth scoring) and an overall weak defence corp for most of the Marner-Matthews era.
This is not news; this has been a consistent criticism of the Leafs. They can overcome these gaps during the regular season, but not against the top teams they regularly face in the playoffs (Boston, Tampa, Florida) due to being in perhaps the toughest division in hockey.
Yet when the Leafs lose in the playoffs, the same old cliché reasons are tossed out — they aren’t tough enough or the core-4 can’t win/don’t care, etc. These are emotional reactions from fans who want their pound of flesh and lazy journalism from pundits who prefer to offer sound bites instead of any kind of deep analysis. However, the root cause has always been roster construction.
Who’s to blame for their roster construction? The former GM (Kyle Dubas) and, by extension, Brendan Shanahan who oversaw (and perhaps vetoed) roster construction decisions. The “core-4” isn’t the issue; it’s the gaping holes in other areas of the roster. The salary consumed by the core-4 is a big part of the issue, and that is also a problem created by Dubas and Shanahan. They did not react quickly enough or do enough to fix the problems they created.
We are seeing a change now with the hiring of Brad Treliving last year. I have to believe Treliving carries more power than Dubas did (Treliving wouldn’t have signed on without assurances that he would have more autonomy). So although Shanahan is still in the picture, he’s now just a spectator; this is Treliving’s show.
There’s a lot to cover, so I’m going to divide this into three articles:
Part 1: How We Got Here
Part 2: Addressing the Defence (future post)
Part 3: Building a Team Beyond the Core 4 (future post)
Part 1: How We Got Here
Dubas and Shanahan failed in three key areas during the Marner-Matthews era:
1. Mismanaged contract negotiations.
Kyle Dubas recently stated that his biggest regret was not signing Matthews and Marner before signing Tavares. He said the Tavares signing lifted the ceiling on the other contract negotiations. Well, what did you think would happen?
He eventually caved in the Marner negotiation, banking on a rising salary cap to make up for it. He lost that gamble when COVID hit.
2. Didn’t focus enough on building a playoff-caliber defence corp.
Their best right-shot defenseman in the Marner-Mathews era: Justin Holl? Jake Gardener? I’m not counting Luke Schenn as he was a rental; he had a good playoff run on the top pair with Morgan Rielly, but that was the GM just getting lucky as Schenn had been a third-pair defenseman most of his career.
Morgan Rielly has been their only consistent offensive threat from their defence. Maybe the Leafs forwards could score more in the playoffs if they had better puck movers on defence. If your defence can’t generate offence, then they better at least be exceptional defensively. Overall, the Leafs defence has been neither. This is not an effort issue, but a physical ability issue.
To call out how wide the gap has been between the Leafs and top playoff teams, the chart below compares the top-3 scoring defencemen for the Leafs to those of Florida and Vegas for the last 2 years of the Dubas era. Morgan Rielly holds his own offensively, but then the production falls off a cliff. And the defence corp for Florida and Vegas are also superior defensively, so it’s a lose-lose.
3. Took too long to figure out their vision of building a team with overwhelming offensive skill (regardless of size) might do well in the regular season, but could not defeat the top teams in playoffs.
This vision was epitomized by the trading of Mason Marchment (who has developed into a good power forward, scoring 142 points over 240 career games) for Denis Malgin (a small forward lacking physical tenacity, and scoring only 81 points over 257 career games). This trade, completed in February of 2020, was ranked one of the worst trade deadline deals by the Leafs, and I have to agree.
Another example was drafting Rasmus Sundin in 2018 (Dubas’ first year as GM). He’s a fine offensive defenceman, but the Leafs did not need another skilled but undersized player on defence, especially after drafting another skilled but undersized defenceman the year before (Timothy Liljegren).
By the time they realized their approach was flawed, they were in salary cap hell and couldn’t compete for top free-agents who would bring balance to the team.
In Fairness, It Wasn’t All Bad
When John Ferguson was briefly the GM of the Leafs (many moons ago), he reportedly wanted to burn the team to the ground and rebuild. That’s how teams like the Penguins and the Red Wings built their dynasties. However, Leafs ownership wouldn’t have it. That lead to several years of trying to build a team with aging veterans (remember adding Lindros way past his prime?). They had a couple of good playoff runs with players like Joe Nieuwendyk and Gary Roberts, but those weren’t teams that could win the Cup, and there was no future growth trajectory (Father Time is still undefeated).
Similar impatience led to Brian Burke trading two #1 draft picks for Phil Kessel (ugh!). Burke recognized the Leafs lacked A-level talent at that time, and took a short cut. Who did the Bruins get with those picks? Dougie Hamilton and Tyler Seguin — both perennial top players in the league, and each one on their own was superior to Phil Kessel.
Shanahan stopped this short-sighted approach and succeeded in convincing ownership to go through a proper rebuild. That meant burning the team to the ground and building through the draft, which led to the drafting of Nylander, Marner, and Matthews (all picks in the top 10 of their respective draft years).
What came next is where it fell apart (see the mistakes referenced earlier).
To give Dubas and Shanahan some credit again, after they boxed themselves into a corner with atrocious salary negotiations, Dubas was very good at finding cheap talent to round out the roster. He was also astute enough to avoid future bad contracts (e.g., not giving goalie Jack Campbell the 5 year $25 million dollar contract that Edmonton gave him). In the process though, he was failing to build a team. It was 5 players plus a bunch of new guys who would roll in each year to plug holes. And the gaps in defence and depth scoring persisted.
Leafs fans have to wonder “what if” Shanahan hired an experienced GM (just look at how well Montreal and Vancouver are building good young teams without getting into salary cap hell) and “what if” Dubas hired an experienced coach to replace Babcock (Keefe’s growing pains led to the Leafs being out coached at playoff time, especially in his first two playoff runs against Columbus and Montreal).
Okay, enough with the misery. The good news is the championship window is still wide open. The Leafs might not be there yet, but positive change has begun. Part 2 will look at how Treliving has started to turn this team around.
Agreed, and again I go back to Mark Hunter should have been made Gm, not Dubas. I think we would have seen much better deep playoff teams