As the Toronto Maple Leafs work on the hiring of their next head coach, an important question needs to be answered: what is it, exactly, that they want to do next season? Is it suddenly right back to “all in,” where they could hire some shorter-burn coach who pushes them for every point they can get? Is that Bruce Cassidy, is that Peter Laviolette?
Probably not, right? They’re obviously excellent coaches, but barring an unforeseen and nearly impossible summer, they’re just not going to have the roster for “Cup contender.”
Should they go get someone in the vein of Martin St. Louis, someone unproven as a head coach in the league who can grow with the group into contender status?
That doesn’t quite feel right either, does it? You’ve still got Auston Matthews (as far as we know) who’ll be 30 when the puck drops on next season, and William Nylander who’s right there too. The un-young John Tavares is under contract for some years to come, and the entire D-corps can be filed under V for Veteran.
All that means you’re trying to be competitive next season and hoping for a bigger build into the following season. Ideally, you’re better than expected at the trade deadline, and you can add more then, and who knows from there.
But also ideally, the clouds will become cotton candy. But maybe, just in case, you should prepare as if that’s not the most likely outcome. You’re going to have to think a bit more long-term at the same time.
So, we’re talking about a tweener here. Someone who’s able to help them next year, but grow with them and stick around for a while. The Leafs aren’t looking for a fling, they’re looking for a marriage.
To be able to accomplish the whole “sticking around for a while” thing, you’re looking at getting a couple things right.
One is playing style. You have to have a coach who’s able to better produce puck possession. If you’re going to bring in Gavin McKenna or Ivar Stenberg, both of whom are talented wingers, you can’t be having them purely dumping in the puck and trying to win it back — that won’t produce wins or development.
But I’m also not sure you need a guy who’s too progressive in that regard, because I’ve been watching the playoffs. Rod the Bod in Carolina, his teams knows when to play direct. I doubt John Tortorella is against straight-line hockey in the third period of a close game. The good teams in these big games pick their spots well, so again, you’ve got to middle it.
And so, I like the idea of someone who’s coached in the league, but hasn’t had 25 years doing it over five teams. I like the name Jay Woodcroft as I’ve mentioned, I like that Jeff Halpern has been with Jon Cooper for years in Tampa Bay, I like that Manny Malhotra has been on NHL benches for years and won a Calder Cup.
It’s not time for “old and proven” (they are not ready for their own version of John Tortorella), or someone too new (I don’t think someone who’s never been on an NHL bench is equipped for the complicated years ahead).
So get the playing style right, the experience level right, and ideally, someone who can get accountability right. Ol’ Willy deserves some extra rope, sure, but there must be a limit.
It feels like John Chayka and Mats Sundin are either under the direction, opinion, or both, that Matthews and Nylander are to be a part of the solution here. And so with that in mind, I think it’s likely they’ll be consulted on the next coaching hire, at least to pick their brains.
Now that the Leafs have the first-overall pick, if they get a coach Matthews likes, I’ll assume he’s going to be back for next season. With that assumption in mind, let’s look at some needs.
There’s already rumours about the Leafs poking around on players out there, and one of the names is Vincent Trocheck. To me that checks a ton of boxes, depending how concerned you are about his age (32). Over the past four seasons he’s averaged over 78 games per season, over 22 goals and over 63 points.
He plays a competitive game and makes just over $5.6 million until 2029. Now, because of that upside he wouldn’t come cheap, but given his cost certainty, could that be worth a real package? (I don’t think it’s worth getting derailed on return here, but the Leafs do have full complement of picks the next two seasons.)
If it isn’t Trocheck, it has to come from somewhere else. The Leafs traded Scott Laughton and Nick Roy, two very capable (and badly misused) depth centers.
In retrospect (and quite honestly in real time), Craig Berube having Laughton, Roy, Pontus Holmberg, and David Kampf at his centre disposal, and finding none of them usable, is truly baffling. These were honest, straight-line defensive depth centres, yet they kept running Matthews out there in the D-zone against elite competition.
I’m assuming the Leafs are going to pick McKenna or Stenberg, so they’ll have a new one in the fold immediately, for which I’m sure they’re thanking the heavens. It was desperate times there on the top line with Matthews, and an injection of elite talent was badly needed. I recognize a guy like McKenna may not be a huge point-getter in Year 1, but he’s got that next-level savant vision.
The next piece here is that they just can’t trade Matthew Knies. The suggestions that Brad Treliving was going to trade this guy never made sense to me. Maybe they wanted him to play tougher or something, but there’s just so few humans like Knies in the league. He’s strong as a bull, skates like the wind, and shoots it at an elite level, all while having great passing touch. He’s only going to get more confident and projecting him for 30 goals and 70-plus points is completely reasonable (if he’s healthy, he should be a point-per-game player). He’s still just 23. They’re trying to win next year.
Trading him now is the Blackhawks trading Brandon Hagel because their timelines didn’t line up, yet that Hagel guy is still just 27 and an absolute elite-level dawg. Meanwhile, Chicago’s rumoured to be willing to trade their fourth-overall pick for a guy who can help today. Funny how that played out. Who knows what they’d have to attach to that pick to turn it into Hagel, who makes just $6.5 million with many years of cost certainty ahead.
But I digress. So the Leafs draft a top winger, they keep Knies, Nylander exists, Easton Cowan is going to be better. Wing is just not a huge off-season priority compared to what’s below. When they add, I’d like to see them add speed there, and ideally speed with size (for archetype I’m thinking Miles Wood, Ilya Mikheyev, Warren Foegele, that kind of depth).
At this point it’s become consensus that Morgan Rielly needs a fresh start somewhere else, and there are rumours that he even agrees. With this, they’ve still got some really solid defenders.
The return of Chris Tanev is a free addition who should make a noticeable difference. Jake McCabe was very good last year, Oliver Ekman-Larsson still has game, and I believe Brandon Carlo — with a full off-season to heal and a new coach — has the most “latent upside,” to steal a phrase from John Chayka.
But priority 1A and 1B are two new defencemen, and ideally, we’re talking about one top-pair guy, and another guy who can skate and make plays. Darren Raddysh is the most-commonly heard name out there for the Leafs, and I’m not opposed to that. I don’t think that name should limit them from aiming higher, though that’s impossible to do through unrestricted free agency.
I’d like to see them acquire one via trade, since free agency doesn’t hold much. There are guys who have warts, guys who want out of their present situation, guys who are overpaid (which isn’t terrible in this new cap world), there’s just guys who will become available. But if you surround the four defenders I mentioned above with a couple guys who can skate and move it, the team will instantly look better.
Think less Phillippe Myers, less Simon Benoit, and more breakout passes. This isn’t a huge ask, or unmanageable.
The only thing that changes here is if you have to trade a guy, and Dennis Hildeby or Artur Akhtyamov end up becoming the back-up. Otherwise Anthony Stolarz and Joseph Woll have shown they can been among the league’s better tandems. Even good teams aren’t perfect everywhere, and their inability to stay healthy is one of the dice you probably have to roll.
In all, Chayka has his work cut out for him. My co-host Nick Kypreos says he hears the new Leafs GM is eager to start making those changes (and interested in making many changes in general) with the draft combine and draft approaching in the next month.
The one thing I like in particular is that this regime already seems more proactive than the previous one. And one thing I learned from training in the summer as a player, is that you can’t figure it all out in August after the cottage. The hard work starts early, and big gains only come when you start right away.
Well, the Leafs have already started making changes. Let’s see what the gains look like in September.