The Harsh Truth For The Toronto Maple Leafs

The Harsh Truth For The Toronto Maple Leafs

by identical scores, sending the Maple Leafs to their worst ever home loss in a game seven. Last year, the season ended like it always did for Toronto. Game seven heartbreak and probably the most embarrassing way possible. That spurred one of the most talented superstars to leave for Vegas and left a whole lot of questions for the organization. Do they have enough depth to replace Mitch Mner? Is Austin Matthews healthy and will he be any good without Mner? Will the goalending be as good as it was last season? All of these questions meant that everyone expected a regression, but no one expected it to look this bad. Austin Matthews is still hurt. The goalending situation is upside down and fans are already saying start the rebuild. So, what the hell is going on here? Why do the Leafs look this bad? Are they this bad? And is it going to last? Well, let’s take a look. Today’s video is in paid partnership by BetterHelp. For myself, my mind is moving a million miles a minute. It’s hard to get my brain to slow down and enjoy life as it is. And one of the most grounding exercises I do to stay present in the moment is list three things I’m grateful for. I’ll give it one right now. It’s my puppy. She’s the best, but it’s a simple routine that helps keep me present in the moment. Everyone’s different, but therapy provides these little tools and lessons that help you see things from another angle. With a therapist, they listen, they ask questions, and give you the tools to make positive changes. BetterHelp makes getting started with therapy much easier. You fill out a short questionnaire, and as soon as possible, you’re matched with a therapist. And if it’s not the right fit, you can make a switch with any therapist at no added cost. With more than 7,000 reviews and a 4.3 rating on Trustpilot, that makes Better Help really reliable. So, if you’ve been putting off taking care of your own mental health, there’s really no better time to start because you can’t fix everything on your own. And sometimes getting help is the best adjustment you can ever make. If you want to get started, you can click the link in the description and go to betterhelp.com/hockey psychology to get 10% off your first month of therapy. Now, I’ll admit when Mitch Mner decided to leave this off seasonason, I thought the Leaf’s main issues would be scoring goals. I thought based on the fact that they were a top 10 defensive team last year and bringing back the exact same decor that defending would be their strong suit and they’ve been a ton of games 2 to1 or 3-2. However, this is the Toronto Maple Leafs. So, anything you know based on logic should be immediately tossed out the window because the Leafs are the anomaly this season. The Leafs offense is among the best in the NHL, but their defense is a bottom three defense in the league. Now, the easy thing to do is to point at the gigantic missing hole on the right wing and Mitch Mner. Aside from the 100 points he gave you on the offensive side of the puck, he is one of the best defensive wingers in the league. So, yes, without Mner, the Leafs are a bit worse defensively, but this much worse, no. This goes beyond Mitch Mner in his starts up the ice. Let’s just soak in the numbers here for a second. So far this season, the Leafs are 31st in rush chances against per game. And at five on five, they’re 32nd in rush goals against per game. Last season, they were eighth in rush chances against and fourth in rush goals against. So far, they’ve given up 15 rush goals against this season. And if you don’t think that’s bad, they only gave up 34 all of last season. Right now, when you play the Toronto Maple Leafs, it is an absolute highway through the middle of the ice. Now, let’s quickly recap what’s going on here tactically for Toronto. It’s clear the Leafs, like many other teams, have tried to emulate the Florida play style, which is one that requires relentless pressure. And in order to do that, you need to have your D pinching down the wall without hesitation. And the main key component of that working is having an F3 high, ready to reload so that the D doesn’t get caught. The Leafs were quite successful at this last season. The only difference is that they got beat by the very team that was just way better at it. The mo this season hasn’t changed, but the personnel has slightly, especially up front on offense, and speed has become a little bit of an issue. The once soft Toronto Maple Leafs are now the biggest and heaviest team in the league. Yet, the soft allegations aren’t going anywhere. But aside from that, if you look at their NHL edge stats, they are one of the slowest teams in the league now. But you can be slow and still play extremely fast if you make the right reads. Toronto just isn’t doing that right now. The Leafs play a 1224 check. So ideally you want your second layer consisting of the F2 and F3 to be in unison here and tight together to take away the wall play and the middle outlet. But here they’re not. The F3 gets caught too far on the other side and that opens up the middle lane seam pass. So now Joshua as the F3 doesn’t reload and instead decides to dive right into pressure. He’s late to the party. Buffalo changes sides and now it’s an oddman rush. Okay, no need to panic. Or maybe you should because the Leafs get confused on their assignments. Myers wants Doy to take the guy at the far blue line while he takes the middle lane drive. Doi starts pointing like you got him. Now we’re all pointing at each other and by the time that happens, the gap opens up right across the seam and it’s a goal against all this because of a lack of cohesion up the ice. It’s kind of the same thing here too. This is actually a textbook pinch and pressure from Toronto as this puck heads up the boards. The D ties up his man and has full faith to jump in with Matthews as the F3 there in support. But the puck hops over his stick. He’s not strong enough on the play because Toronto is on fire with balances lately. It ends up with a twoon-one and a goal against. I’m not kidding when I say I could go through almost every single game this season and pick out an instance where the F3s and D’s are completely disconnected and it leads to a ton of oddman rushes. Like I said, tactically nothing has changed here for Toronto, but when the forwards aren’t making the reads quick enough and the D’s still have the green light to pinch, you get all sorts of trouble when trying to maintain possession. You’ll also get a team that looks very slow and behind the play. Ironically, when it comes to this part of the game, Mitch Mner is very much missed. Leaf fans either want to believe that he’s the biggest reason why the Leafs are struggling or that the Leaf struggles have nothing to do with Mner. Of course, the truth always lies in the middle. Mner was the Leaf’s most intelligent player, especially in this area where he’d usually be playing the role as the F3, and it’s actually where he did the most damage last season on the Leafs. Missing that kind of presence on your forward group, especially with your other top players is going to have an impact. Now, these struggles are also connected to how the Leafs want to generate offense. Again, very similar to teams like Florida. Their offense wants to start off the forche. They want to get the puck in deep, cause a turnover, and wreak havoc. They were successful at it last year as the Leafs were seventh in the NHL when it came to generating offense off the forche and cycle. This year, they still remain one of the best teams in the league at this. As it stands right now, they are first in turnover goals four and it’s because when it works, the pressure is constant smothering and forces the other teams into mistakes. That being said, it is a very demanding way to create offense. Now, the Leafs this year are also a better team off the rush, which is a good thing. It means that the talent of Toronto can breathe a little bit with the puck and hold on to it to make plays. Tactically, we’ve seen Toronto use a lot of these stretch passes to spread out teams and catch them for a quick counterattack. However, puck management in these areas remain a problem. At times, you have players holding on the pucks a little bit too long inside of the offensive blue line, which leads to an oddman rush chance against. And as for the stretch plays, more often than not, they are met with teams stepping up to cut off the pass entirely and catch Toronto vulnerable with a chance against. The numbers reflect this too, as they rank 30th in the NHL in giveaways to opponents. A healthy balance of creating offense both on the rush and forch check is essential. But Toronto looks like a team that’s trying to do both on most nights, but ends up getting caught in the middle with no distinct identity. The Leafs are a team that can score, but it’s coming at a cost that’s far greater than they’d like. Another issue glaring for Toronto is breaking out the puck. In today’s NHL, having defenseman that can move the puck with a crisp first pass or with their feet to beat for checkers is really important to getting your team up the ice and avoid an extended zone time. Aside from maybe Morgan Riley who’s had his own struggles, this decor at full health still doesn’t have a bonafide puck mover. But last year they had the exact same decor and still had success. However, to counteract their lack of puck movers, Toronto played a really structured game, especially low in the zone. They double team pucks really well and supported each other on the breakout. And even when their D were required to make a play under duress, they could count on the structure to get them out of a jam. This year, everyone seems to be off, including the forwards when helping for support. Florida really exposed this decor’s ability to play pucks in the playoffs. They use these set rim plays so that the Leafs D would have to pick up the puck on their backhand while facing pressure. We’ve seen a few times now this season where the other teams are deploying this strategy, and it’s working wonders. Of course, this is where an injury to a guy like Chris Tanv is monumental. Not only does he eat pucks for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but he’s one of, if not the best Leaf defenseman at absorbing for checks and making these subtle breakout plays. Possession is also something they don’t have on either side of the puck as well. Offensively, they rank 29th in ozone time, and defensively, they are 27th in the NHL in terms of time spent in their own end. Because they struggle in puck management, these turnovers snowball into extended possessions by the opponent. And even under great structure, fatigue almost always creates mistakes. Of course, this is why goalending has been struggling, too. If you look at who’s been the worst goalenders in terms of goal save above expected this season, it’s been Kaden Primu and Anthony Stolars in the bottom five. Goalending and defense are closely related because the Leafs can’t defend right now. They’re asking their goalie to make a lot of difficult saves, especially off the rush. But that being said, there are some stinkers that would have been saved last year that are just finding a way in right now. All this has accumulated into a team that is puzzling to watch on most nights for fans. But perhaps the biggest elephant in the room is Austin Matthews. Right now, he’s hurt, which doesn’t make anyone in Toronto feel any better. But there’s been a noticeable dip in his play over the last two seasons. From the 1920 season to the 23-24 season, Matthew scored 257 goals in 350 games. The last two seasons though, he’s only scored 38 goals in 78 games. Some people point to MNER being gone, but the numbers don’t support that at all. Matthews has historically produced just as well, sometimes better, without Mner beside him. And when you look deeper at the physical indicators, they aren’t trending the right way. His shot velocity has steadily dropped year after year. It’s down from the mid9s to mid80s this season. And the same thing happened with his top skating speed. He used to be in the upper percentiles of the league, and now he’s fallen below average. It’s early this season, so these stats aren’t definitive, but they match what we’re seeing on the ice. Another telling sign is he used to spend almost all of his shifts in the offensive zone, ranking near the very top of the league. That number has taken a sharp dip over the last few seasons, too. Add in a gradual decline in hits, takeaways, and overall impact. It’s clear that this hasn’t come out of nowhere. Matthew’s game has taken a dip. Whether it’s injuries, conditioning, or coaching, none of us know for sure. But he hasn’t looked like the bonafide superstar that Leaf fans are used to. Zooming out and looking at all these issues, it’s not hard to see why the parade feels like it’s actually cancelled for good this time. But like every team in the league right now, the upside for Toronto is that there are one or two hot weeks away from turning it around and quieting all the noise. They have the talent to do it, but as of right now, the sky seems like it’s falling in Toronto. And if it doesn’t turn around quickly, the nightmare may be true for Leaf fans. So, what do you think of the Toronto Maple Leafs? Do you think they will be fine or do they truly suck? Let me know your thoughts in the comments down below and check out some of these articles from Sportsnet by Justin Bourne in the description down below. He’s got some great insight on the Leafs as a whole this season. And if you want to see more breakdowns just like this, you can check out our other videos here and subscribe to the

#hockey #nhl #torontomapleleafs
Going to therapy is a sign of strength, not weakness. My paid partner BetterHelp
makes therapy simple, with 10% off your first month to help you get started: https://betterhelp.com/hockeypsychology

In this video, we take a deep dive into the struggles of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Justin Bourne article for Sportsnet here: https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article/five-thoughts-on-problems-maple-leafs-must-address-and-soon/