Babcock tinkers with Leafs’ blueline

The Leafs’ bench boss continues to move around his chess pieces.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 5 years ago
Babcock tinkers with Leafs’ blueline
Zuma Press

No doubt about it, the Toronto Maple Leafs have one of the deepest forward cores in the entire NHL. And with #1 goalie Frederik Andersen holding down the fort in behind of legit superstars like Auston Matthews, John Tavares, Mitch Marner and the like, the team appears set for years. There’s just one problem… the blue line.

Aside from Morgan Rielly and the inconsistent Jake Gardiner, the Leafs don’t have a lot of top end talent in their defence corps. In his latest column for TSN though, statistician Travis Yost breaks down the creative ways in which Leafs head coach Mike Babcock has tinkered with his defence in order to make up for their deficiencies.

Check out some of these insights from Yost:

Rielly and Gardiner have been the anchors of the Toronto defensive corps. Rielly has, on average, played about 36 per cent of 5-on-5 minutes for the Leafs this season; Gardiner is a shade higher at 38 per cent. It’s exceptionally rare that one of these guys sees limited action, and usually it’s correlated with a game that’s loaded with power-play/penalty-kill situations or blowout scenarios.
 Nikita Zaitsev, who opened up the season as a consistent top-four (in many cases, top-two) defender at 5-on-5. In the last 10 games or so, he’s seen a reduction in minutes. Zaitsev is leaned on heavily when it comes to the penalty kill, but it’s pretty clear to me that the coaching staff is giving a bit more preference to some of the younger skaters who are better at transitioning the puck.
Zaitsev’s loss has ultimately been the gain of a guy like , who has been used more at even strength. In three of the last six games, Dermott has seen first-pairing minutes. That’s a remarkable jump for a guy who spent half of last season in the AHL.
 Martin Marincin has a reputation as Toronto’s sixth defenceman but I don’t see much of a difference between his usage and that of Igor Ozhiganov. It does make you wonder what the game plan is for Ozhiganov going forward – he’s on a very cheap one-year contract and is used accordingly. But you do have to wonder if there’s more value in playing something of a specialist in those minutes as opposed to Ozhiganov, who doesn’t have a full minute of either power-play or penalty-killing time to his name so far this season. He is as insulated as any player on the Leafs roster, and seems to be a prime target for replacement in the coming months. That’s a far cry from a player like Ron Hainsey, who is seeing less usage this season but still is relied upon heavily to kill penalties.

One thing that's clear. Babcock and the Leafs could desperately use a legit #1 defenseman to bolster his defence corps.

Source: Travis Yost