Things have gone from bad to worse for the moribund Toronto Maple Leafs this season. Fans and pundits have debated on how to fix the struggling team: Fire the general manager… Replace the head coach… Trade Auston Matthews or William Nylander… Add a prominent boost to the top-six…
But according to former NHL executive Doug MacLean, there’s one glaring area the Leafs desperately need to address if they hope to become a serious contender. Speaking on Sportsnet’s Real Kyper & Bourne show, MacLean explained:
There’s a lot more problems than just Matthews and Nylander with this team. To me, they don’t have a No. 1 or No. 2 defenceman. They don’t. They need people to transport the puck out of their zone, to get it going… I like Morgan Rielly, but he’s a No. 4 guy now. Maybe a 4/5 guy. So, missing a top defenseman, in my opinion they don’t have that. And every good team has it. So that’s a start… Why do you think the Minnesota Wild wanted to get Quinn Hughes so bad? Because they need a No. 1 defenseman.
Did the Leafs’ ‘DNA change’ go too far?
But MacLean also insists that the Leafs’ problems run much deeper than that. Remember when GM Brad Treliving told us all after last season that the team needed to change their ‘DNA’? MacLean suggests, in essence, that maybe they went too far on that front, and it completely threw everything out of whack. He used the Nashville Predators’ overhaul last season as an example, only in reverse.
When you change your identity, you’ve gotta be really careful. A year ago, we talked about how the Nashville Predators changed their identity. They went from a hard-working, hard-checking team, and all of a sudden they wanted to get skill. And they brought in some older skill guys on the downside (Jonathan Marchessault, Steven Stamkos)… and they changed their identity and they’re still struggling from it. The Leafs decided to change their identity, and went from being a really skilled team to being a harder team to play against (editor’s note: supposedly).
The challenge is, when you change your identity, you still need skill to get into the playoffs. You gotta get in first. And there’s been a skill depletion in this group… Right now, they’re flawed.
Leafs need a jolt — is it on the coaching staff?
Yes, Mitch Marner is gone, and they haven’t come close to replenishing that skill quotient. But knowing that the Leafs’ prospects cupboard is pretty bare, what, then, can they do? What’s the alternative? Is it as simple as firing head coach Craig Berube?
“They need a jolt,” said MacLean. “I would jolt them by making a change on the coaching staff. I wouldn’t fire Craig Berube right now—I wouldn’t let them (the players) off the hook. But I’d make a change on the coaching staff. I don’t know if his assistant coaches are letting him down, but the assistant coaches have got to be key, key people when you’ve got key, key players stumbling and struggling.”
Would changing the assistant coaches satisfy Leafs Nation at this point? It’s doubtful. But acquiring a No. 1 blueliner is pretty much an impossibility right now. And trading Matthews and/or Nylander also seems highly unlikely, even though that would be the only real true ‘jolt’ that would really shake this team up.
In the meantime, we all watch and wait for the first shoe to drop.
