The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 335: Finally Someone Talks About The Leafs

Episode Date: January 16, 2020

Ian Tulloch joins the show to discuss the Toronto Maple Leafs saving their season by getting back to their offensively prolific ways, the way things have changed under Sheldon Keefe, how good Auston Matthews looks now that he's being properly used, and whether the defense will once again come into question come the postseason.See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

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My name is Dimitri Filipovich. and joining me is my good buddy and part of the podcasting, the hockey podcasting brethren. It's Ian Tollock. Ian, what's going on, man? Not too much. I've been trying to get on this show for a while, and I've been listening to you for a while, and I'm glad that we were finally able to make this work. I think you're going to be hopping on the Leafskeeks podcast right after this, so it should be a fun evening. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, the always fun podcast crossover. So we're going to do, we're going to deep dive the Leafs on my side of things, and then when we hop over to yours, we're going to do like a litany of Western

Conference topics. you've prepared for us. And I guess it's, uh, it's fitting considering, uh, we're going to be covering the Leafs on this podcast. And on the Leafskekech podcast, we're going to be doing the Western conference and eliminating that Eastern Conference bias. So we're given a, we're given a healthy dose of a little bit of everything for our listeners. Got to give the people what they want. You know, Leafskeeks podcast coming for that Western Conference, uh, deep dive. Exactly. Got to give the people what they want. Yeah. Um, well, I'm excited to talk about the Leafs. I, uh, you know, But it's funny because given the state of hockey media and how much the Leafs hit cover

and how many, you know, well-followed voices there are online, there's certainly no shortage of Leafs content and Leaves coverage. For my part, I've written about them quite a bit this year on ESPN just because I think that the sort of the splits of before and after the coaching chains are really fascinating and how it's unlocked Austin Matthews and various other storylines there. But in terms of the podcast, beyond just reacting to the immediate news of Mike Babcock's firing, I actually haven't covered the Leafs that much on this show, which I think would surprise a lot of people that don't listen to the show. But I don't know.

I just find that there's so much other content out there. And it's kind of all those angles are already being covered that I feel like I'm good on my end. So I can just focus on other stuff. So not that they're not an interesting team by any means. It's just that like I find that there's very few sort of unique angles you can hit at this point with the Leafs that haven't already been talked about at nausea and various different platforms. Yeah, there's a lot of Leafs fatigue, I think, in hockey media when it comes to. to what we're talking about whether or not Austin Matthews is the best 200-foot player in hockey. And I'm thinking in my head when they asked that question,

he wasn't even that good defensively at the start of the season. And Connor McDavid was lighting it up. It can be a bit frustrating in this market sometimes because I'm a Leafs fan and I'm writing about it, trying to be objective about it, and trying my best to bring a unique spin on things that people want to listen to. But I understand the frustration with the fact that every radio station you listen to, whether or not it's Toronto-based, is going to be talking about the Toronto Maple Leafs,

even when they're struggling. It reminds me a lot of the L.A. Lakers over the last few years in basketball when they were just completely irrelevant, and ESPN would be starting off their coverage talking about the Lakers. It's not fun. No one likes listening to that.

But I agree with you. I think the Leafs are actually a fascinating story ever since the Babcock firing because they started off the season, frankly, really poorly. I know their shot differentials at five-on-five were solid. They were getting into the offensive zone and staying there more often

than they were in the defensive zone, but their shot quality was pathetic. They were shooting from the boards. They were shooting from the blue line. It was a really weird, just set of circumstances, because this is a team who, over the previous three seasons, was top three in the league when it came to shot quality. They were generating shots from in-tight, those high danger chances.

When you look at Austin Matthews heat map, it's just a pool of red in front of the net, because that's where he generates his chances. But under Mike Babcock this season, for whatever reason, a lot of point shots. Sheldon Keefis since come in, I think we're going to be talking about their possession style of play and some of the cool things they do in the offensive zone

to help prevent their defensemen from taking those shots, getting the puck a bit deeper into the ozone down the wall, and then they're looking to create those cross-seem passes into the middle of the ice. And I'm sure anyone who listens to your podcast knows that if you can get the puck going from east to west and force the goal to move laterally in his crease, you're really going to open up a lot of net, and that's going to help increase your shooting percentage.

So I think the Leafs have done a fantastic job of that over the last month or so under Sheldon Keefe. There are definitely some flaws that we're going to, going to talk about, but if you compare what they were under Mike Babcock, what they've been under Sheldon Keith, it's night and day. They're a top five possession team in the league right now, and they've been a fun team to watch. Yeah, to that point of the East-West passes, I think, you know, Austin Matthews is one of the few players I'd say in the league. There's, I don't know, whatever you want to cap the list that. It's a very short, finite group of guys who can, like,

cleanly beat a goalie with their shot, even when the goalie set. And part of that is because of his sort of unpredictability from all the different angles and all the different shooting pockets. he can get maximum velocity off of. But when you have some of these plays, and I think there was an instance of it in the most recent game against the Devils, where Marner's flinging the puck east-west, and the goalie doesn't have time to get set

and he's moving. It's like, for that, I mean, when you have Austin Matthews, it's basically the hockey equivalent of like an alley-up. Yeah, it reminds me of when Alex Olvechkin gets a cross-seem pass, and if the goalie hasn't already read that pass, then it's game over, because that player can beat you when you're standing still. if you're moving east-west in your crease,

you don't have much of a chance at it. So that's what a lot of teams have learned, is that if you can force the defense to kind of shift laterally, if you can force the goaltender to shift laterally, it's going to open up a lot of space for that shooter to put the puck in the net, even if it's not an Austin Matthews, even if it's an Alexander Kerfoot,

a Pierre Engval, a player lower in the lineup, if you can create that movement in the offensive zone, that's what's going to drive a goaltender nuts. And I think they've been doing a really good job of that with Sheldon Keefe. If you don't mind, I'd love to talk about some of the things they've been doing tactically in the offensive zone, just because I think it's a really fascinating thing that the team's doing, and the Vancouver Canucks are doing

it a little bit too, where they'll have a third forward support really high in the offensive zone, and with the Leafs, it's basically almost like they have three defensemen on the ice in the offensive zone. The center comes extremely high, or sometimes it's a winger. We just call it F3 in the offensive zone, the third forward, comes

extremely high towards the blue line. And that way, when he comes there, the defensemen know that they have the freedom to skate down the boards into open space. And for the Leafs, That's been a Morgan Riley. That's been a Travis Dermit, a Justin Hall. Sometimes it's a Cody Cici and it doesn't go too great. But most of the time, it works out well because the defenseman is skating to open space.

You continue the cycle instead of shooting the puck from the blue line. And I think one of the weird things about the blue line in hockey, we don't talk about it enough, is that offside weirdly prevents you from creating offense because it traps you in the offensive zone. All of a sudden, you skate the buck back to your blue line. You can't go back any further. so a lot of the times teams feel forced to fire a puck on net, not because they think it's the best decision, but because they don't want to lose the puck,

so they just quickly get rid of it. What Sheldon keeps trying to do is he wants that third forward to come high for support. The defenseman has a passing outlet, so he doesn't have to fire that low percentage shot. You maintain possession, work the puck down lower in the zone, and look for that high percentage shot. They've been doing a much better job of that lately over the past month or two, and it's a big part of the reason that their shot quality has increased exponentially.

Well, and I thought you weren't even going to take it down. route. So it's interesting you bring that up because when you when you started talking about that, what I thought you were going to reference was what I've noticed is in the neutral zone. There's been a lot more and you don't really see it much, especially at 5 on 5. And hockey, you see it a lot more in three on three when everyone kind of keys in on the importance of possession and not giving it away. But it's a much more of like kind of like a soccer tactic where there's been instances where I think under Mike Babcock, the forward that's approaching the opposing blue line would have just dumped it in and gone off for a change. But in

Instead, they're shifting the puck and kind of cycling it back to their defensemen and reloading and coming with reinforcements. And then that's allowing them to not only keep the possession, but have fresh legs to attack off the rush, which they've also done a lot more of and which is also kind of coincided with that discrepancy in quality of looks under Keith as opposed to Babcock when they were focusing and trying to become this sort of cycle team, which I much more equated to like jamming a square peg into a round hole. where it was like Babcock went into the season with this idea of we're not going to lose in the playoffs again the same way we lost the past couple years so we're going to play this brand of hockey and it doesn't matter if we don't have the personnel equipped for it because I'm just going to go down with the ship and ultimately he did and so I thought that's what you're going to bring up because I think that is also a significant change from what was happening at the start of the year and a big reason for the for the newfound success offensively and the way you described it

reloading on the breakout I think is a perfect way of describing it because you realize that it's a one on three, you're skating the puck up the ice, out of your own blue line, pass center ice, and you realize you're not going to get in the offensive zone. Instead of just flipping the puck in, going off for a line change, and giving the other team the puck, if you're skilled enough, why don't you just spin back, pass it back to your defenseman, hop off the ice, now your team has the puck, five fresh legs come over the ice, or I guess 10 fresh legs, five new bodies, come over the ice, and now you can attack with numbers. And we see it in soccer all the time, because you would never see in soccer a one-on-

three where the player just launches the ball over the net and, you know, oh, other team has a goal kick now, it's okay. We've got our team back on defense. We're said, we'd never do that because that's not a smart play. Yet in hockey all the time, we're encouraged, you know, get the puck deep, you know, puck's in deep, got a dump and change. I've never loved it as a strategy. I really like what Sheldon keeps doing because the emphasis is puck possession. You don't want the other team to have the puck and you want to do everything you can to A, hold on to it and B, to get it back. And I think they've been doing an excellent job of that. William Nealander, I feel like has always played that way when he doesn't see a clean entry for him. He'll just swing back, circle back,

pick up more speed and gain the zone the next time. One of my favorite players watching it on the Leafs lately has been Pierre Engball, who most people probably haven't heard of. And he's six foot five, most of it is in his neck, but he's a really talented hockey player. He's, he's lanky, he's long, he's got some speed, and he's been playing in the top six lately because of some injuries on left wing for Toronto. And he's actually looked really good there. In fact, he's looked good enough that it's making people question whether or not a player like Andreas Yonson or Casperi Capnan is potentially expendable in a trade for a defenseman because of just how good some players on the left wing have looked this year.

Pierre Engval's a name. Ilya have suffered a really nasty wrist injury. His wrist got sliced by a hockey skate, but he'd been fantastic this year. He looked like a Zach Hyman plus, basically, on the wing. So I think the Leafs have been a really fascinating team under Sheldon Keith because not only are they looking a bit different tactically, they're giving some opportunities to some players

that Mike Babcock wasn't willing to give some extra leash to, And players like Pierre Engball, Justin Hall, we're seeing what they can do in a bigger role. And they've looked really good this year. Well, and I do think, you know, when you start talking about stuff like this and you start citing some of these stats, I think because of that sort of Leifes media fatigue, a lot of people who aren't fans of Toronto Maple Leafs start rolling their eyes and start kind of overcompensating by being hyperbolic on the other extreme. And I think the reason why I did want to deep dive this team and dive into some of these

numbers and some of these structural changes is because it is so different from what's happening around the league in the sense of, you know, we've seen this trend this season with the most recent coach firing being the seventh one and part and a couple of them have been sort of, you know, gross misconduct where they were mistreating their players or doing various unacceptable things. And that's part of it. And then there's a couple performance related reasons, which are usually because the team's goalie just can't buy them a save and they have a sub nine to say percentage and so the coach gets blamed like in Nashville for example or even New Jersey and San Jose to a degree in this case I mean there is the Babcock stuff that came out about

you know the list with Marner and how the players really didn't seem to like playing on your own but I think for our purposes there's also such a sort of tangible difference to point to both structurally and stylistically and how they're playing that we can learn from and you can adapt if you're another team that's paying attention and sort of see with the same personnel really I know they've had a slightly easier schedule at times. And I know they have some injuries now, but there was a while there where they got Marner back and they got DeVaris back and they were kind of firing on all cylinders. At the same time, though, with the same personnel, they're getting significantly different

results. And I think that does really lay credence to the impact a coach can have in a league where at times it's tough to quantify that because a lot of it does happen behind the scenes. And I know a lot of Leafs fans kind of feel vindicated over the past month because of the frustrations that a lot of us have had over the last few years. With Babcock, it's interesting because there's clearly this track record of success that he had back in Detroit and Team Canada. And you can't take that away from him. He had those successes for a reason.

He was a very solid coach at getting the most out of his players. Even his first two years in Toronto, I think we forget that with a roster that consisted of players like Rich Clune and Sean Matthias and Brad Boyes playing in the top six, he got that team to out-shoot and out-chance the opposition in 2015, 2016 during the tank year, they couldn't buy a save and they couldn't score. goal in the power play because Peter Holland was on PP1. P.P.A. Parento was on those teams too, wasn't he? Maple Leaf Legend. P.A. Parento, Cody Franson, Martin Merenchen, all the analytics darlings, my favorites. It was a fun team. It was a great team. But he got that team of basically misfits to play well at even strength. He got a team of rookies to get to the playoffs in 2016-17. So I can understand

why a lot of Babcock truthers out there are insisting that this man is a legend. And, And, you know, even though there are going to be some negatives that come with him, if you follow any team closely around the league, you're going to be frustrated with the player that he puts on his third pairing, or that one winger he gives too many minutes to, or that one veteran that he needs to take out of the lineup, but he refuses to take out of the lineup. I think all 31 fan bases have those frustrations. But I think with Babcock, the really frustrating thing was his unwillingness to change anything, the fact that he thought that the way that this roster was meant to play this year, you know, have Morgan Riley and Tysonberry sitting down. back and ask them to play a bit more defensively. That's really not a good idea if you've ever watched those two players play. They're not good without the puck. They're special with the puck, but without the puck, they're a bit of an adventure in their own end. The long stretch pass is last year when Nikita Zaitsev, Ron Hainsey, and Roman Polack are

your right side defenseman. It's just, it wasn't a well-conceived plan, and it was frustrating for a lot of us who said, you have a phenomenal forward group up front. Why don't you build a system around getting them the puck and having them skate the puck up the ice with possession. We never really got to see it and we're seeing it this year under Sheldon Keefe and it looks fantastic. So I think you made a great point when it comes to a square peg, round hole. Sometimes that's the biggest thing with coaches. It's not necessarily having your system and any team you go to, you bring the Babcock system. The idea is you arrive at a team that

has a certain set of players and you need to maximize their skill sets. And I think that's what Sheldon Keith has done a solid job of so far. But we could talk about some of the negatives if you want because there definitely are some things we should point out. Well, let's stick with a positive. because I think they do exceed the negatives. And, you know, we've talked a bit sort of about Austin Matthews, but I really want to dive into that because that was ultimately, especially during last year's postseason and then to start this year, that was the thing I kept coming back to as sort of the most unacceptable misutilization.

It just felt like, I know from the outside, there was a lot of, like, annoyance with the fact that it felt like they didn't want to take the training wheels off and they were really taking baby steps with increasing his ice time. And I get it from the perspective, especially the regular season with the 82 game grind, that you want to stretch it out and you want to maintain the players' health and longevity and optimize their performance,

especially with how much the Leafs are invested in sports science. And all of that makes sense and all of it as well and good. So when you were looking at the regular season stats and all the per 60 rates, I totally understood it. But then when you enter the playoffs, and especially Game 7, I remember I was actually in Toronto last spring at the Yahoo offices, and just sitting there watching that.

And everyone in the office was just in disbelief that Matthews was going to end the game playing under 19 minutes. And when they were down one goal and had to create offense, they just basically refused to adapt or adjust the script. And it was like the same as another game in November against the Ottawa senators where they were just rolling their lines and they were playing all the guys, regardless of how good of a chance they gave them to create some of that offense they needed. And so I think that was the thing for me. That was kind of the line in the sand and the thing that you really couldn't overlook.

and we've seen it now under Keefe what Austin Matthews with the right usage and the right exposure on the ice can do and you know part of it is a big shooting and percentage inflated but I think they're really kind of unlocking I'm here now to challenge David Pasternak for that goal scoring title and I think it's be a fascinating race and the other thing that we should mention as well that I really like under Keefe is there's none of that like oh we're doing things just because that's the way we've always done it I've seen a lot of experimenting and willingness to kind of mix and match and try new things and the fact that they're all of a sudden, despite having some success, basically flipped Marner and Elander on the wings and unlock the both of those lines to now

kind of reach their full potential. I think that really speaks to both Keefe's willingness to try new stuff and also the players involved and the fact that there was more there to kind of squeeze if you're using the example of kind of like squeezing that orange and trying to get as much juice as you can out of it. Yeah, and I think you had a great tweet about this about Austin Matthews. The five most longest minutes he'd ever played in a game like his five games with the most minutes have all come within the last month under shelton keef and in games where you're losing it turns out having the best even strength goal score on the planet play more minutes is a good thing and uh the leaps in that game seven that you referenced they were trailing that game i think since 10 minutes in the first

period they were trailing the entire game and there were red gregard gotei and patrick marlowe were still getting regular shifts i had to write a post game article on that i've been doing the the post-game Leafs report cards this year for all 82 games. Last year I was doing the playoffs and having to write that column was maybe the hardest thing I had to do in my life because I was just so frustrated. The inner Leafs fan of me couldn't believe that a coach wasn't willing to play his best player more than 18 and a half minutes. And I ended up pulling through and I ended up trying my best to be objective and I asked

Rachel Dory and my good friend afterwards. Was I too hard on Babcock? I wanted to try to be objective here and she angrily responded, you were not harsh enough. So I think the temperature in Leifes Nation after that game, I think management certainly earned some clout with the fans that if they wanted to fire Babcock that offseason, I think they would have had some positive responses from the fans. And after a month and a half into the season where the team was drastically underperforming, it reached the point where I think most Leif's fans wanted Babcock to be fired.

So it was an interesting set of circumstances. But you brought up Austin Matthews. How good he has looked under Sheldon Keith lately, it's so much fun to watch him in the offensive zone, because there's more motion now, there's more movement, there's more open space for both the defensemen in the forwards. Getting Austin Matthews into more open space, it's a lot of fun to watch because, like you said,

his release on his wrist shot, it's so unique, it's so quick, it's so deceptive, goaltenders don't know how to read it. But the thing that he's added this season that he's never had before is that one-time slap shot. For the longest time in his career, up until really this year, he'd been exclusively a wrist-shot, snapshot kind of guy,

much like a Phil Kessel or Max Pachorette. he was phenomenal at it. He arguably has a top three wrist shot in the world, but he didn't have that Ovechkin, Patrick Lone, Ilius Pettersen, one-time bomb that he could let go on the power play or off a cross-lice past even strength. Now he's added that to his game, and I think that's part of the reason that he's really going to challenge David Pasternak this year,

because it's not just the one-dimensional kind of off-the-rush snip of a wrist-shot he's got now. Now, if he gets a bit of open space without the puck, all of a sudden he might be the most dangerous player on the ice, and you really need to account for him. And I know you've brought this up with Patrick Lani in the past. When you have that weapon as a shooter, it opens up space for the other four skaters on the ice. Yeah, no, it does. And we've seen it.

I mean, he's got, what, 18 goals in his past 17 games. He's got 20 goals and 24 games under Keefe. You know, the overall minutes are up about nearly a minute, but it's like a minute and a half or so extra at 5-on-5 compared to what I've seen under Babcock. And I think the biggest change from me here, and I'm glad you mentioned that ozone movement. And I think it's coincided with that move that I suggested earlier, which was flipping the wingers and giving Marner a longer look alongside Matthews. And one of the stats that I was most sort of blown away by to see when I was preparing for this podcast was that prior to this season, Matthews and Marner had played 231 minutes combined

five-on-five in their 207 games together as Leefs over the past three years. This year, they're already up to 204 minutes in just 36 games. and they've been absolutely out of this world together. I mean, they're outscoring team 17 to 7. They've got a 67.5% high danger rate, 64.6 expected goals. I mean, all of the numbers are through the roof. And I understood last year when, you know,

Marner and Tavares had found so much chemistry around the bat and you kind of kept them going. But the fact that they finally kind of went along with this and did it and Keith was willing to try it. And it's like, oh, yeah, putting your best shooter with your best passer and creating all sorts of havoc with that in the offensive zone is probably going to lead to good results and we've finally seen a pay dividends for them.

Yeah, crazy what happens when you put the team's best passer and best shooter on the ice together. It's such a novel concept. Yeah, yeah. You should be a head coach, Dimitri. Yeah, well. One of my favorite things about this Matthews-Marner debate

is the fact that when you look at the numbers, it was really interesting over the last couple years. Matthews and Marner, even though they were special offensive players when it came to putting up points, their shot differentials at 5-on-5 never really added up to their talent. It was very much like a Stephen Stamcoast or a Patrick Kane. They were outscoring their problems because they're phenomenal talents in the offensive zone,

but they weren't as good at getting the puck back. And I think this year, if you watch Austin Matthews closely, especially under Sheldon Keith, he's been so engaged without the puck, and that's been the biggest criticism of his game. And it's one that I've had of him both this year and last year and in the last couple of years, even though he's a special offensive talent, you never saw him backtrack like a Pavl Datsuke or backtrack, even like a Sydney Crosby.

And it's frustrating when someone has that talent. And I'm thinking of maybe James Harden in the NBA when you see a special talent offensively, just not putting in the effort defensively. You're mad because you know that their overall impact could be better just because of how incredibly talented they are. Austin Matthews, I think if you watch him closely over the last few weeks, he's been completely on fire, not just offensively. But when he loses the puck in the offensive zone, he'll turn around, skate, put a his head down, skate as fast as he can, force a turnover with a stick lift, and then get a three

on two the other way and score. And it's just, it's incredible to watch, especially when the Leafs are losing. It seems like he kind of reaches that extra gear. And I know we talk about the Evgeny Malkin Red Mist. When he goes in a Red Mist mode, he's just a freak and you can't mess with him. When Austin Matthews realizes that his team's losing by a goal or two and he needs to score a goal, it might be my favorite thing to watch in the NHL right now, other than Connor McDavid completely embarrassing Morgan Riley. But Austin Matthews is just, he's so, fun to watch now and it felt like that was missing under Mike Babcock. I'm not sure how much of that is unleashing him with a Mitch Marner. I'm not sure how much of that is honestly just Matthew's buying

into the coaching staff. I know that him and Babcock never really saw eye to eye. There were those infamous meetings in the summers of Arizona over the last couple of years. But it feels like Sheldon Keefe is on the same page with Matthews, is on the same page with the team as a whole. Matthews and Marner have been close friends the last couple years. It sounds like they really wanted to play with each other. And like you said, with the numbers, the on-ice results, with what we're seeing when we watch them play, they're bringing out the best in each other. And this Tavares' Kneelander combination has also looked great. That's the biggest question you had to ask yourself. If Matthews and Marner are playing together, is it going to be worth it with what you're getting

on that next line with Tavares Nielander? Nealander's proving that even though he might not have the high-end passing ability of a Mitch Marner, he's able to get his team into the offensive zone and stay there. I think if we just talked about a pure possession player, like we see in soccer back in the day with like the Chavez and Iniestas, the players who just wanted to have possession all the time. Nealander's that kind of player. And he sets himself up in the offensive zone with Tavares and company. And they've been doing some damage this year.

Tavar's finally looking like himself again. He started off the year with a baby, didn't look too good, suffered that finger injury, I think a few weeks into the season. But now that everything's clicking, you're starting to see this top six on the Leafs look the way that we all expected it to look earlier in the year. Reminds me a bit of Tampa Bay.

Both teams kind of started the year and you didn't know what the heck was going on. And now if you look at their numbers over the last month, everything kind of makes sense again. Yeah, all is right in the world. Yeah, the Neelander thing is worth hammering home because it's not too long ago there was a lot of consternation and angst about whether he was overpaid

and whether he's made a mistake. And now you look at it and it's like, oh, we've got this guy for his age 23 to 27 seasons at under $7 million. We'll take that, considering he's on pace for, what, 35 goals now and 70 plus points. And the neutral zone work has always been there with his ability to maneuver and carry the puck into his own. The thing that's really stuck out to me this year is I think he has changed, and I'm not sure how much of it is his sort of a concerted effort to either add another

facet to his game or shut the critics down, but it feels like he has also made a concerted effort to change his shot profile as well, getting much closer to the net and just dominating in terms of the high danger looks. I think our friend Andrew Berkshire has him as on, based on SporLogic's data as the Leafs leader in terms of inner slot shots per per minute and he has just been crushing it there as well and that's coincided with the shooting percentage bump we would have expected naturally anyways and so now that he's not shooting 5% or whatever he was last year and the Pucks are starting to go into the net

the outlook on him and his contract and how good he is certainly looks significantly different than this time last year yeah everyone in Toronto radio and TVs has been trying to trade Nealander for years and it's especially been the case over the last year when he came in on December 1st, or I guess it was December 7th, his first game after the two-month contract dispute. I think that lost him a lot of, I guess, fans and fanfare and resulted in a lot of the older generation, not being a big fan of William Nealander and everyone calling him Perimeter Willie, and getting frustrated with his effort. And for what it's worth, I can understand frustration with a player when they don't put in a lot of effort.

I know someone like Alex Semin maybe comes to mind from back in the day a player who was always incredibly talented. And if you looked at the numbers, you could see that the on ice results when he was on the ice, it was excellent. You always want a talented player on the ice instead of someone with less talent. But I think the frustrating thing with both a Semen and a Neelander is that you don't see the effort without the puck. And sometimes that can really frustrate you. I think Nealander has done a much better job of that this year. And he's helped, like you said, shut up some of the critics. When it comes to that perimeter stat you were referencing, Mike Kelly put it.

a great tweet the other day, talking about how Nealander just scored his 20th goal of the season. 16 have come from the net front area, and that's the second most by any player in the NHL. He's not on the perimeter. He's getting to those high danger areas, and he's been finishing this year. Yeah, he certainly has. Well, I think, you know, we're talking about here about Matthews, Marinar, Neelander, Tavares, like, I know at the start of the year it was a question because of the system and they weren't scoring enough goals, and so it was a net negative. Now that they're back on track and pretty much under Keith, they've been first in PowerPlay, 5-1-5. goal scoring, you name it.

The questions are going to kind of resurface now from the past couple years of, all right, this is exciting. They're playing these eight, six games against the hurricanes. It feels like every night you're going to get double-digit combined goals from them and their opponent, and it's really fun to watch and really fun to follow. But when a push comes to shove,

when we get to the playoffs, and especially if they play a team like Boston who plays so stylistically different, will that be enough and will they be able to finally get over the hump? And so I think that's kind of a natural segue to talking about the blue line, to talking about Freddie Anderson because I think there's a lot to obviously unpack there as well, especially now that you've got Riley out, you've got muzzin out, and, you know, they're moving some stuff around. They're obviously going to give Sandine a longer look here. And there's a lot of

moving parts there. We can take this conversation pretty much any way you like. Yeah, and I know that in Toronto, the big frustration is that this team, are they gritty enough, are they tough enough, are they strong enough defensively? I don't think a lot of fans will be happy until this team is winning games 1-0 or 2-1, and it's just not a team that's designed to win that way. It's a team that's designed to win 4-3 or 5-4. And at the end of the day, the team with the more goals wins. So in theory, it shouldn't really matter which way you play stylistically

as long as you do it better than the other team. And if you can force the game to be played that way, and if you can win tight games, which the Leafs proved they were able to do in the playoffs last year against the Bruins. They played a tight 1-1 game. I think it was in game 5. It was so close, nothing was really happening. but the Leifes actually outplayed them.

They out shot out-chance them and out-scored them in that game. So it's this weird narrative in Leifes Nation that you're trying to unpack. You're trying to figure out how much of it is true, how much of it is the team is clearly not that great defensively, but how much of that can be cured by the offensive ability by players like Austin Matthews, Mitch Marner, John Tavares, the fact that the power plays, once again a top three power play in the league. But there are holes on the roster. Like you said, even in a healthy lineup, if you're giving Morgan Riley and

Heisenberry a lot of minutes. Those are two players who have historically always given up a lot defensively. With Jake Muzin out of the lineup, it's really forced the team to play some players in tougher, high-leverage minutes who aren't used to it. And now with Morgan Riley out, it's forcing Travis Dermott to be on the first pair, and this is his first time really facing tough competition. I've always been a Travis Dermott truthier. I've always been so many things that this guy deserves more minutes, much like a Nate Schmidt

in years past, or Shea Theodore, or Braden McNab, or any of the other guys who went to Vegas and performed well in higher leverage minutes. I always thought that Travis Germant is the kind of player who tightens things up in the neutral zone. He doesn't let you gain the zone. Yeah, he gives up a few odd man rushes, but the pros tend to outweigh the cons when he's on the ice. I'll be curious to see how that play style works

against top competition, because there's an argument to be made that the more aggressive high-risk style is better off on a second pairing against more sheltered competition, because that way, if you make a mistake, at least it's not with the other team's best scorer on the game. ice. It's with a third liner on the ice and you can live with that and there's more of a pro-con kind of element to it. We saw that with Eric Carlson back in Ottawa, they preferred playing him

against second and third lines as opposed to the top competition. Now when you have Funuf and Cece going up against the top competition, that's not necessarily ideal. I'm not sure if that's the best way to do things, but if they actually had someone who could handle those minutes, I could see it being a good thing. With the Leif's, I think the big thing we need to talk about under Sheldon Kiev is the odd man rushes. It's something I'm going to be writing about later this week, but it's not in the public metrics. And I think that's the hard part, is that we don't have any kind of empirical data

that we can point to and say, this has been a problem lately. Look at this. It's something that if you had sport logic data, if you had some private data, we could look at it and talk about it. But from watching the games closely, I've been doing the post-game report cards

for all games this year, and over the last couple weeks, I've noticed a trend, is that in the third period, if the team has a multiple goal lead, that's usually score-effects-wise. We'll see teams shut things down, try to play sludge hockey,

you know, off a glass and out, and no odd man rushes against. The Leafs haven't really changed their play style. They're still playing the same style of hockey, which we've always argued in the past is a good thing, is that teams will be better off if they didn't know the score, and they just tried to get another goal,

because if you score that next goal, now the game's completely over, and the team stands no chance of coming back. Delees have done a good job of that, but they're also having sometimes four players deep in the offensive zone, four below the dots, they get caught for a two-on-one the other way,

and the opposition scores. I know you're out west, So you probably saw that Leif's Vancouver game where Vancouver, I think, had three breakaways in the third period, despite the fact that the Leifes were holding a lead. That's not something you ever want to see as a coaching staff. So I think it's a really interesting conversation when it comes to the score effects aspect of things, because we all know that when a team has the lead, they're not going to be pouring on the pressure as much as, you know, in a tie game or when they need to score.

And that makes sense because when you're holding a lead, there's more cost to allowing a goal than there is benefit for scoring a goal. And I think the Leafs right now, they play such a high event game while losing that it results in other teams getting back in games where maybe they shouldn't be. And we have to get into that conversation of, well, would they be better off playing some sludge hockey, some safe off the glass and out, dump and changing in the neutral zone instead of holding on to the puck. That's where we get into that conversation. I think it's an actually interesting one to have. But I think that kind of leads into what we were talking about Babcock and his shift under Keefe, which was kind of jamming the square peg into the round hole and how Babcock was essentially his undoing. was having a different vision or a different plan for how he wanted this team to look. And so he wasn't utilizing the toys.

He was given by Caldupus and Brennan-Hannan, the way they were intended to be used. And so I think this team, especially when you're talking about guys like Riley and Barry, like part of what makes them effective, net positive players is that kind of creativity and their ability to, when they're fully unleashed and fully unlock, jump into the play and create. And so I think if you're asking them to play a different game, depending on the score state, you can really get into trouble there. Now, obviously, I think if there's like two minutes left in a game when you're hanging on, that's one thing.

I think when you go up early in a game, though, and teams fundamentally change the way they're playing just because they're up early, I think that's when you can get into trouble the most. So I think you kind of have to accept it. I think that this really opens up a whole other can of worms in terms of our as a collective. And I think you and I certainly are included in this as well are kind of biases when it comes to, reacting to individual plays and basically judging results or judging the process based on the results. If a puck goes into the net, you all of a sudden latch onto that as opposed to. If the

goalie makes the save, you might be willing to overlook it or not think twice about it. And so I think there's so much at work there and the Leafs kind of, and part of what makes them interesting beyond just the size of the market and the media coverage of them is that they really kind of strike all of those notes and lead to this polarizing discussion of how you can play and how what's the most optimal way to win hockey games. And the way that they've built their roster, they've really bought in skill and they've really bought in when it comes to puck moving. And they've put defense a bit on the backburner when it comes to acquiring a Tyson Barry who is very similar to a Morgan Riley when they don't really have any strong defensive players

on their blue line other than Jake Muzon. So what this reminds me of is in basketball, when the Golden State Warriors decided that we're going to build a team around jump shooting, it was what they saw is, you know, market inefficiency, this is the best way to win basketball games. Well, you can't win a title by jump shooting. Every team was ever won, won it by dominating low in the post. And whenever the Warriors lost a game in the playoffs where they got out rebounded, or, you know, or they got bullied down low,

you'd hear Charles Barkley on TV going off about how a jump shooting team can't win a championship. And then they do it, and all of a sudden, the narrative changes. And now basketball, if you look at it, it's Steph Curry, basically changed the NBA by forcing the league to realize the importance of three-point shooting. And I think the Rockets contributed to it as well. With the Leafs, I'm curious to see if they can prove the importance of creating offense, and that if you have enough talented offensive players who can create things off the rush and hold on to the puck.

And if you have the puck and the other team doesn't, maybe it's okay that you're not that great defensively because you're going to have it for 55% of the game and you're going to have 55% of the shots, chances. and goals at the end of the day, even if you struggle in your own end and it doesn't look pretty when Cody Cici and Morgan Riley are defending a three-on-two rush, at least in the long run, you have those offensive players who are going to get you there to the point where you've won the game 5-3. Now, is that the way that we've been taught that hockey is supposed to be played and the way that,

you know, tough teams have to play in the playoffs? It doesn't fit that narrative. So I really want a team like Tampa Bay or Toronto to win a cup. But then again, didn't we see this with Pittsburgh a few years ago when Crosby, Maloney, I mean, you had the third line of Haglin, Kessel, the HPK, Nick Benino. That team wasn't very good defensively either year. I know the second year, I think it was a bit more fluky that second year when they had Ron Hainsey on the top pairing. I'm not sure if that's an ideal way to build a contender.

I don't Mike Babcock might disagree. But I think you look at that first year of Pittsburgh winning a cup under Mike Sullivan, they knew they weren't good defensively. They looked at their blue line. They went, okay, Chris LaTang, we like him. He's great with the puck, not that great defensively. Look at the other players on here. Justin Schultz and company

never been great defensively, but he can advance the puck up the ice to our talented forwards, who can create off the rush. Phil Kessel and Carl Hagelin can destroy Roman Polack off the rush in transition, and that's what we saw on the Stanley Cup final,

and it's part of the reason that team won the Cup. I think the Leafs are built in that mold, and a lot of people in this market want them to play like the Boston Bruins or the St. Louis Blues, or even the Vegas Golden Knights with Ryan Reeves on their fourth line. Fundamentally, that's just not how they're built.

and I'm not sure if the fans who feel that way are ever going to change their mind and I think I've accepted that because when I look at my least report cards the comment section a lot of it is just about oh you know floatlander that's William Nealander floatlander just you know not back checking

this team they need more grit they need more toughness they need a player like and then you'll see the list of you know Roman Polax and Mark Boriackees and it's just it's not the way I think the team needs to be built but at the same time I can understand why team, why fans want a bit more defense on the team because Tyson Barry, he's been a conundrum this year. He's been such a fascinating player because the first month and a half under Mike Babcock,

he was an absolute disaster. It was unmitigated, just brutal. He was being asked to play defensively. He wasn't very good defensively. He wasn't on the first power play unit. He wasn't jumping up into the rush. He wasn't even jumping up into the cycle in the offensive zone. He was kind of standing stationary at the blue line. And you've watched Tyson Barry in Colorado. That's not how he plays. He's a rover. He plays a lot like Roman Yosey, Morgan Riley. He likes having the puck on his stick. We've seen it a bit more under Sheldon Keith, but one of the interesting things of Barry is that up until Morgan Riley got injured recently, Barry had been playing with Morgan Riley. And they both play hockey the exact same way. They like having the puck. They like moving around the perimeter

in the offensive zone. They like jumping up in the play. But when you're playing with a partner like that and they jump up in the rush, you can't also jump up in the rush. You have to stay back on the blue line, I'm wondering if now that Morgan Riley's hurt and Tyson Barry's forced to play with either Travis Dermott or Erasmus Sandin, I'm curious if we see him take that next step offensively or that next step when it comes to impact in the game because even though his numbers have looked solid over the last month or so, I would question how much of that was directly a product of his play and how much of it was a product of Austin Matthews playing at the same time as him, Morgan Riley playing pretty well over this past month until he got hurt.

So it's always a tricky thing with these on-ice numbers. When a player has fantastic on-ice numbers over, let's say, a month, how much of it was that player specifically driving those results and how much of it was kind of the context and the situation around him and his linemates and company? It's a tricky thing to really get to the bottom of. Well, look at a great example for me, and I know there's some health involved, certainly.

And last year he was banged up and now he looks like he's fully healthy. But Kevin Shattankirk, for example, last year when he gets bought out, it's like yeah i mean he certainly struggled and i think he could play better but his most common line mates he was sharing ice with were like frederick clason and brendan smith and jimmy vesey and now he goes to headman and kuturov and point and stamcoes and those are the guys he's getting out there with and his usage is significantly different in terms of who he's playing and who he's playing with and where he's starting out on the ice and so his underlying numbers are through the roof and i remember at the start of the year he's near the top of most war models and everything and

it's going to be a fascinating sort of test case to see how much teams buy into that because he smartly bet on himself and basically just considering the Rangers are going to be paying him regardless took this little one-year sweetheart build up his value back up deal with the lightning and so now he's going to hit the free-h market again at the same time as Tyson Barry this summer and I'll be curious to see like how the teams value those guys and how much Kevin Shattengirk has bought himself in terms of goodwill and stock with teams that are going to be spending on them this summer as opposed to how much money Tyson-Berry's cost himself with his season because I think those scripts have flipped quite a bit based on where those two guys were last year

and I think that we do take into account quality of teammates and quality of competition and all that. But I think sometimes as much as we do, we can also conveniently overlook it. And I think in this case, there's a lot of that going around. I'm not buying that it's like, oh, he's a different player or the market is different. and so he's changed his game. I think it is just a matter of he is, he was taken from one situation and thrown into a significantly different one

and the results are unsurprisingly different. Yeah, and with Kevin Chattonkirk, it's funny. I remember when I was doing my season preview, kind of prepping for it, going through every team, rereading Dom Lus Chishin's season previews. And I realized, I'm like, wait, Kevin Shattonk's on this team, Patrick Maroon's on this team.

I forgot that those guys had signed with them in the offseason. It's crazy how Tampa Bay is arguably a better team now than they were last year, when you look at their pure roster talent, I don't get how they keep doing it. Well, and the thing I give them credit for, and I had this on my list of notes as well, not that the Leafs have necessarily fallen culprit to this,

although you could argue that based on the way Mike Babcock approached the first six weeks of the season, they did, and the fact that they didn't address it in the summer makes this management group to blame as well. But it's this idea of overreacting to playoff failures, and especially if you lose to, if you're a profile of a skilled team when you lose to a more defensively minded,

kind of grittier, a tougher, bigger team, overreacting to that to playoff failure and going into the summer, either changing your personnel or the way you play and basically kind of ironically negating what made you special and effective and got you to the playoffs in the first place. And we see that time and time again around this league.

And I wonder, you know, just psychologically, it's such a fascinating thought experiment of how teams combat that and how you don't let that sort of, of market pressure and everyone going on radio shows and on Twitter and talking about how something needs to change and overreacting and panicking to playoff losses. How you fight that and combat that and basically go, no, we realize that we do a certain thing well and we're going to double down on that and the Leafs have done that now. And so I give them credit for that and the Lightning did as well.

I mean, Patty Maroon is a bit more of a sort of gritty type, but they didn't, after getting swept historically by the Blue Jack because they certainly didn't go away from what made them special this summer either. And so that's what makes the Leafs and the Lightning and this potential round one matchup between them that we seem to be tricking towards such like a fascinating subplot of which way it's going to go and which team's going to come out on top and what the storyline stemming from that will be. Well, we all know that it's going to end up being Leafs first Bruins in the first round. It's going to go seven games and the Leafs are going to do something disastrous in that game seven. Somehow Jake Gardner is going to find his way back onto the team.

Parish who's in. Turn it over from behind the net. But I think, the perfect example of what you're talking about when it comes to understanding what your team does well and leaning into it and maybe learning from the mistakes of past teams look at the Washington Capitals you know they were a team that was built on the best player on their team was the best goal score in the history of the game and when it didn't work out under bruce brujro and they fired him after you know yet another game seven loss what they decided to do is let's bring in dale hunter you know we're really going to toughen things up here we're going to teach Oveshkin ought to play defensive hockey.

Didn't go very well. Ovechkin, I think, the worst year of his career, if not the second worst year of his career. It didn't start changing until they brought him out of Mote's to help get things going again on the power play. He helped kind of revitalize Ovechkin's career in that regard. And when Barry Trots was brought in, a lot of people thought, oh, no, this defensive coach from Nashville, he's going to come in and he's going to suck the life out of Ovechkin's game. He realized that he had one of the most talented rosters in the league.

He set Ovechkin free and let him do his thing offensively, but he also did help tighten some things up in the defensive zone. But I don't think the thing that Barry Trots gets enough credit for, we always talk about him is this defensive guru and what he's done the last two years in Long Island. It's really incredible what he's done with that defensive zone structure. But offensively, he got that Washington Capitals team to be very creative off the rush. I know if you look at their shots and their scoring chances over the last few years, especially under Barry Trots, they weren't that great. They were break even to above average, but they were never top five level in the league. But if you're watching their games closely, or

or if you had access to some private data, you'd see that they were generating chances off the rush at a high rate, and they were generating those cross-ice passes at a high rate. I think some of that might be the talent on the roster when you have a Nick Baxterom and an Afghani Kuznetsov, you're going to be making more of those passes naturally. But I think the team clearly wanted their forwards to be creating that movement in the offense's own,

and that was because of the coaching, leaning into their strengths offensively. And I think if you look at the Leafs, their roster construction is similar to those capitals teams back in the day. Who's your best player? It's a player who's going to score 50 goals this year in Austin Matthews, if he stays healthy. Who's one of your often criticized player? Well, this European dynamic skill player who, he takes some shifts off here and there,

but when he's on the ice, good things tend to happen and the pros outweigh the cons. Sam and Nealander. Who's your best defenseman? Well, I would argue Jake Muzin, but most of the fan base thinks it's Morgan Riley, who is a phenomenal offensive talent, much like Mike Green, but you need to figure out a way to not let his defensive concerns, you know, screw you over. I think the Leafs need to learn from Washington's, you know, mistake of going in the Dale Hunter direction. And clearly, Kyle Dubus is buying into what Sheldon Keefe is doing right now. But I don't think the rest of the fan bases.

I think the rest of the fan base is still a bit skeptical. I know that the recent success when it comes to whether or not you're talking about the predictive results and the in the shots and the chances and the expected goals. Or if we're just talking about, you know, descriptively, they've won a lot of games over the last month and a half. it's been great obviously, but I don't think you're going to convince some people until this team wins around in the playoffs where they're throwing hits and they're punching people in the mouth. And I just don't think that's the style of hockey.

This team's built to play. You have Austin Matthews, Mitch Marne, or William Neeland or John Tavares, outskill the other team. They're not going to be able to keep up with your talent and your skill. And that's the type of game Toronto wants to play. Possession-wise, they want the puck.

Well, and I guess the question here, moving forward and spinning it forward and looking ahead is for a lot of these teams, the lightning, for example, you know, there aren't going to be any fundamental changes between now and the trade deadline, but the lightning do have a variety of different ways that if they see something, they can address it with the assets they have and some flexibility in terms of moving some stuff around. The Penguins, similarly, a lot of those Eastern Conference teams do, whereas with the Leafs, beyond just getting healthy and getting Muzin and Riley back into the

lineup, that's kind of the interesting thing with them where it's like there aren't too many sort of tangible brupence for how you can significantly improve this team given the draft capital they've already given up how much they've already kind of committed themselves financially to this roster and so beyond getting healthy and i guess you know some hopefully improvements from young players and young contributors that are already in the lineup it kind of this is the team they're likely going to have when they get healthy heading in and i guess the question of whether that's enough when you have teams like the lightning who are similarly playing remarkably well lately but still have some extra sort of bullets in their chambers to fire if they if the opportunity presents itself

with the deadline. Yeah. And what we might forget is that the Leafs traded away their first round pick this year to help get rid of Patrick Marlowe's cap hit in the offseason that went to Carolina. Carolina made a few trades like that. They picked up a first round pick. I believe they acquired Dominic Bach as well in a trade like that. I just yeah, I really like what they got Terabine in for taking up Bickle's contract a couple years ago. Yeah, that's worked out pretty decently for I'd say. Yeah. He's doing all right there.

There are a couple teams now. I know in the most recent 31 thoughts, Elliot Freeman talked about how the ducks have expressed interest in using their cap space to take on other people's mistakes and get future helpful assets for them. I know the Blackhawks, I've identified them as a very interesting team because they can basically take on anyone's expiring contract the rest of the season with Seabrook on LTIR and Dahan on LTIR. And so the thing I keep coming back to is whether the Leafs would explain.

explore potentially moving Cody Sisi in that direction and opening up that cap hit of his to take on a more useful contributor. The issue is if you look at the market of the fencemen that are plausibly available for a reasonable price, there's players that I'd view as improvements over CC, but there isn't anyone that I view as kind of this like slam dunk home run trade where it's like you go out and get that guy and he's automatically going to be a shirt of fire top four player that's going to move the needle. And so I guess that's the question for them beyond just like whatever conversation we want to have about Cody Cici and how good he is or how bad he is, it's what are you using with that space and how are you going to fill it

and whether you're actually going to tangibly improve it if you're the Leafs. Yeah, with Cody Cici, I think it's fair to say he's what, a number six defenseman in the NHL, if that. I mean, look at his usage. He went from 18 minutes at 515 and 2205 under Bacock, which was just insane, but I guess more fitting for this, given the system and his individual skill set to 1633 at 515 and 1948 overall under Keith. And he's kind of, I think at times, I didn't even go too far. It's very easy to kind of dunk on him with like, oh, look how bad he looked on this play and he makes it easy on

us. But I think just even on regular plays, he kind of sticks out like a sore thumb now on occasion on this team, given the direction they're trending in and how they've gone back this kind of fast-paced off-the-rush skill game. And so I think the usage itself really kind of speaks to how the Leafs and how Sheldon Keith feel about him, regardless of any online debates who might have about his value. Yeah, and the thing that you brought up there, the way that he kind of sticks out like a sore thumb when you watch a play, it reminds me a lot of, I watch a lot of soccer, and when you have a really skilled team, it has a lot of skilled playmakers, and then they put that one

really tall guy on the pitch who can, you know, do headers, and they try passing the ball on his feet and who always lose it. I feel like sometimes when you see the least making these fancy passes in the offensive zone, and between the legs, behind the back, you know, one-touch pass, and then it ends up on Cody Cici's stick. and a lot of the times he takes that extra second, that extra two seconds to make a play. Now nobody's open, now he kind of flings it into the boards.

It's a puck battle, the least lose the puck battle, and the puck's going the other way. He never really makes that brutal kind of Jake Gardner mistake right in front of your net that's just going to drive you nuts. But I think it's Death by 1,000 paper cuts with him.

He plays that kind of safe off the glass and out style. He hasn't been making the off and glass and out passes as much as usual. But I still think that a player like Timothy Lilligran, who's been performing really well for the Marley's this year. He's still young and he's still someone I think can make an impact at the NHLLLLisle-Lever. So when it's all said and done, are Sandine and Lilli Grin on the playoff roster? I think with how well they played this year, I'd make the argument that they both should be on the playoff roster.

And at that point, you have Riley, Muzin, Dermit, Sandine, Barry, Hall, Lilliegrin. That's seven players right there. I'm not sure if this team needs to make a trade if Sandine and Lilligerr are legit and they can come in in these next couple weeks and help the Leafs kind of get over these injury concerns. The bigger question for me is, when Jake Muzin gets back and he's 100%, when Morgan Riley gets back and he's 100%, what do these pairings look like? And are the Leafs still in a market for the defenseman? Or have Rasmus and Sandin and Timothy O'Legrin,

have they proven the fact that you don't need to rent a player anymore because we've kind of provided that for you? In a similar way to when Travis Dermott was called up his first season, the Leafs were thinking about trading for a defenseman, but Dermott had played so well that they didn't need to anymore. Well, and I will say, I don't want to panic troll here, but I do think it's fair to point out that a lot of this conversation were like just skipping past it and viewing the rest of the regular season as a formality. And especially given the injuries and how the past couple games have looked, I know the game against New Jersey was a different story. But what I'm talking about just purely against NHL teams, the Leafs have certainly shown some warts now.

And so I think with how close Florida is and how absolutely just obscenely dominant the Metro Division is and very likely might qualify five teams this season, it is. it isn't like necessarily a foregone conclusion that we can just like write this Atlantic division in stone. I think there are still a lot of moving parts there. And so I think, you know, braving this storm here and kind of riding it out while you have these injuries is one thing. But I do think like the next couple weeks are going to be really telling in terms of what they can get out of a guy like Sandy. And I know he looked good in his first cameo back after the world juniors. But I think they're going to need to even more from him because we've seen the minutes plummet for a guy like CC. I think they're asking a lot of players now to all of a sudden do more than their skill sets are probably suited for.

And that's when I think we get into trouble when it's not just that the player is struggling, but it's that you're asking him to do too much. And then it kind of compounds the issue. And I think we might see that with this leaves blue one. Yeah. And the thing with Travis Dermit, he's getting first pair usage right now. For the longest time, he'd been on the third pair and never even got a shot on the second pair. And I was just begging for him to be put on a second pair and see what he could do because he's been absolutely crushing his. third pair of minutes for the last few years. And typically when someone dominates that well against sheltered competition, if you bump up the usage a little bit, he'll continue to play well.

He won't keep dominating at the extent that he was, but usually when you're that good at crushing third and fourth lines, you can do decently against second lines and you can take the odd shift against a first line. Right now, Travis Dermott's being a hard match to first lines. And I'm not sure if he's ready for that. I'm not sure if that's ever going to be the kind of player he is. But I think him and Rasmus Sandin, I think right now can both play on a second.

second pair. I think they're both that good when it comes to how well they move the puck, how well they shut things down in the neutral zone. The biggest frustration I have with a lot of least defense, whether it's Morgan Riley or Tyson Barry or Cody Cici, is that they back up so much in transition defense. They back up behind center ice, behind their own blue line, they back up onto their goalie and give the opposing forward a free entry into the offensive zone and a free passing lane across the ice. Sandine and Dermit do an excellent job of standing up on opponents in the neutral zone. Stepping up on. them before they get to the red line even when you watch Travis Dermott play.

A lot of the times defense will step up at the blue line and force you to dump it in. Travis Dermott forces you to make a decision at the red line. He doesn't want you to be able to dump it in. He doesn't want you to get past center ice. And I've always really valued that in his game, but I'm curious to see if it's going to work against some of the best players in the league because now there's a higher likelihood of him getting walked when that happens because there's a higher skill player. And also there's a bigger kind of payoff for the other team because now it's a high skill

player with a two on one instead of a third or fourth liner with a two on one where they usually can't do much damage. So I'm curious if Travis Dermit can still find a way to make things work in the top half of the lineup. I think a second pairing for him might be ideal in the long run. But again, when Muzin and Riley come back, Dermit's probably relegated back to the third pairing. Rasmus Sandin's going to be very interesting player to watch because there's never one specific trait that stands out to you when you watch his game. It's not like he's an elite skater. It's not like he has a fantastic shot. It's not like he's Eric Carlson when it comes to whipping these stretch passes.

But he's just a smart player. And he makes the right play so often that I think on a team that relies on puck possession and puck movement and getting all five players on the ice moving and getting everyone to touch the puck, I think that's really going to benefit a player like Sandin. And I think he can do a lot more with more minutes. So with Dermit getting north of 20 minutes a night, with Sandine getting a lot more than he's got in the past, we're going to see if this Leaves Blue Line can hold up over these next

few weeks. I think they can, but again, I've been wrong many times before, so we'll see what happens. Yeah, it might be a bit of a blessing in the skies, getting standing back in there, even if it means burning up that first year of ZLC. But I think, you know, where he's really going to excel, and I think we already saw a little bit of it, is that offense's own awareness of becoming more of a sort of new breed, modern eventsman from the perspective of not only walking the blue line, but how often we see defensemen just because it's the safe play, fire the puck towards a net from a low percentage angle and most oftentimes right into directly into a shoplocker shin pads and it just completely ends a possession with sandine we've already seen that willingness to kind of hold on to the puck

and wait for shooting lanes uh to open and then the ability to get the puck through so that you know a zach hyman can tip it for example from unique angles and so i think that's going to fit in perfectly to the system and what we'll be talking about from what they want to do in the offensive zone in terms of prioritizing quality and getting it down down low closer to the net to your skilled players where your forwards can take advantage and I think Sandine's a perfect fit from that regard. Yeah and I've taken a lot of flack this year for criticizing point shots because I get really frustrated when a player at the blue line has a clear sight to the net. There's no screen and they just fire a shot on net because to me that's a turnover.

You know that you're not going to create anything off of that. There's not going to be a rebound. It's just going to be a whistle. But when you're Raspis-Sandian and you're walking the line and you create a shooting lane and there's clearly traffic in front and you make eye contact with the player that you're trying to send the tip to, and you basically saucer pass it to somewhere he can shoot it. Sometimes that saucer pass is two feet in the air. Sometimes it's two feet in the air. Sometimes it's, you know, just a couple inches off the ice.

Sometimes it's on the ice. You see with the slap pass, that's one of my favorite plays from the point. I like those shots. I really like the idea of trying to get the puck to the dangerous area where something good can happen. But if you're just mindlessly firing a puck into a shin pad from the blue line or if you're shooting from the boards where there isn't any traffic,

that shot selection always drives me nuts and it's one of the things when I'm doing the report cards I tend to dock players like Tyson Barry when they're blasting slap shots into shin pads or they have a long ozone possession and the offensive zone they're in there for a full minute

and then you fire the puck into the goalie's glove when you could have made a better play with Rasmus Sandin I agree with you I think he's a player who sees the ice a bit better and understands that you want to pass players into open space but if that space isn't there and I can make eye contact with a player in front of the net I'm going to go for that deflection.

I don't care about my shot beating a goaltender. I don't have that good of a shot. But I know that if I can get it through traffic and get it near a stick for a deflection, that's when good things are going to happen. And that's why he ended up being one of the Marley's better power play quarterbacks. It's funny, they had players that were specifically designed to be on the power play instead of Rasmus Sandin,

but he always ended up being the better power play quarterback. Because he just, he made the right decision to get Jeremy Bracco into open ice for a pass. Or if everyone was covered and he saw someone in, front of the net, he knew that he could fire it low or fire it where their stick was, get a deflection and good things would happen. So sometimes it's not necessarily, you know, a big slap shot from a point that you need or, you know, that elite saucer passing ability. Sometimes it's just knowing the right play, making quick decisions, and being able to think fast. And I think Rasmus Sandeens

done a great job of that. Yeah. All right. Well, Ian, let's put a pin in this discussion. We're going to take this conversation over your podcast. And we're going to talk more about the Western Conference and keep it going. And so I'm looking forward to that. And I highly recommend and hope that everyone who's listening to this right now goes and checks that out as well. Yeah, we'll be talking about your Vancouver Canucks. We'll be talking about some other teams. That's going to be on the Leafs Geeks podcast. Wherever you're listening to the

PDO cast, you can find it in the same spot. On Twitter, if you want to check me out, I'm at Ian Graf, which was a nickname famously given to me by Jeff O'Neill. I think after I wrote a Frederick Goteer article, of all things, of all players for me to defend and come to the defense to, Frederick Gautier was my hill to die on in Leifes Nation. So there you go. Stranger Things have happened, I guess.

Classic stuff. All right, man. I was going to say we'll talk soon, but we're going to talk really, really soon. So let's take a couple minutes' break here, and we're going to pick it back up. Yep. Avalanche, Quinn Hughes, Kale McCar, all the good stuff. Talk to you soon, buddy. The Hockey P.D.O.cast with Dmitri Filipovich.

Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovich and on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com slash hockey. Pediocast.