When Real Kyper and Bourne started up at 3:00 p.m. ET on May 3 — the day after the Leafs beat the Lightning 5-0 in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs — we were coming off an unusual pre-show meeting. Our producer, Sam McKee, had pulled clips for us to go over from the coaches and players, and we were searching for the most essential topics, but it was a little harder than usual. It was hard because we’re a Leafs show, and for the Leafs … what went wrong? Who didn’t you like? Where was the conflict?
Everybody was just … good. Great, in many cases. That doesn’t make for the best radio, as much as fans loved that we had this problem.
That was six days ago.
What a difference a week makes.
To say the ghosts of the Maple Leafs’ (recent) past came back in Game 4’s 7-3 loss is an understatement. It was a haunting.
The fears were that this team doesn’t have killer instinct, right? That’s what we heard from Kyle Dubas in his 2021 post-season press conference. We heard it from Brendan Shanahan that year too, and if you want to go back to 2019, Patrick Marleau offered the same analysis about the group.
The reputation is that the group wants success, but that the second they have it, they relax. The reputation is that they’re great at getting opponents in a rear naked choke, but as soon as they do, they don’t squeeze hard enough to make them tap or pass out. In the 2019 playoffs Toronto led 1-0, 2-1, and 3-2 over Boston and rolled over for the last two games. They needed a win to move past Columbus in 2020 and couldn’t muster a goal. In 2021 they led their series against Montreal 3-1 and worked their way to a listless seventh game loss.
It’s not that the Leafs are tied 2-2 with the defending Cup champs right now that’s a problem. The problem is that the story of those past failures has been “Young players who have to learn how to win,” and the way they lost Game 4 would make fans worried that the learning isn’t happening. Today’s Real Kyper and Bourne podcast will inevitably be the inverse of the one we did after Game 1, because what went right for the Leafs in Game 4? Who could you like?
In that fourth game, there’s only about 25 minutes of video worth analyzing, as once it’s a 5-0 score it goes off the rails when the Leafs tried to play a different brand of hockey than anything they’d ever employ in a close game, so we can’t learn much from it.
What’s staggering is how much of this series has been played like that. Between the power plays and the amount of play with the score out of reach (making one team play uncommonly aggressive, which opens them up and changes the whole look of the hockey), we’ve barely got a sense for how these teams truly match up (though we have some inkling that it plays out in Tampa’s favour when they do).
Check this out – the games haven’t been close at all:
What’s strange is this isn’t unique to the Leafs/Bolts series. Right now the average margin of victory through a week of playoff games is over three goals per game (Prashanth Iyer, who tweeted the above, also pointed that out here). The playoffs have looked different. We’re used to seeing tight defence squeezing the life out of offences, the game grinding to a halt, and teams eking out 2-1 and 3-2 wins. We’re used to seeing Dallas-Calgary, not whatever the heck this round of playoffs has been.
So, some thoughts and takeaways from what we’ve seen from the Leafs so far, who head home to Toronto with a best-of-three ahead of them, and home ice advantage. We’ll start with a positive, as challenging as they are to find.
All is not lost for the Leafs
Game-to-game momentum in the playoffs is rarely a thing when there aren’t injuries, and this series speaks that truth louder than most. If each game were a grind-it-out, every-inch-matters type series, you’d have to think that would favour the defending Cup champs, who have experience getting through those tough moments. If it’s going to be more of an offensive “who knows, anything can happen” series, that has to help Toronto. The uptick in offence during the regular season is finally spilling into the playoffs, and the Leafs can play that way.
They returned a number of players from injury right before the playoffs who haven’t been impactful yet, namely Ondrej Kase and Michael Bunting. Those guys have had some runway to get going now, and the team has stayed healthy thus far. They should be at full capacity for a bounce back. In theory, of course.
Let’s get more specific though:
This isn’t about the bottom of the lineup, and the questions up top are massive
You can quibble about the fourth line construction, or the third pair names, but at the end of the day, Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner are getting their lunch fed to them by the shutdown line of Killorn-Point-Cirelli, and maybe more importantly, Victor Hedman and Erik Cernak.
Against that forward group over two games in Tampa Bay, they were outshot 15-1 at even strength, and out-chanced just as drastically. And that’s while starting in the offensive zone the sweeping majority of the times they’ve hopped on the ice.
In the playoffs against Montreal in 2021, the Leafs didn’t shy away from Montreal’s desire to match Phillip Danault’s line against Matthews group, as they figured their top guys should win that matchup. They didn’t.
Not only is Tampa’s defensive trio better than Montreal’s by a fair distance, but we’ve seen enough now to know the Leafs have to make efforts with last change to get their best players on the rink against inferior opponents. Sure, you want those guys to win their minutes regardless of their opponents, but you’ve got to put them in a position to succeed here. That’s the bulk of what coaching is: getting the right guys on the ice at the right time, and the Leafs will control that in Game 5.
At home, I don’t think the Leafs need to make any drastic lineup changes to get away from Tampa (when they’re back in Tampa it may be a different story), they just need to deploy the Matthews line wisely.
One last thing on this: at some point Matthews and Marner, regardless of who their linemate is and who their opposition is, have to win their minutes. When they’re on, they get to the dangerous areas. Their whole team does:
Matthews may win the Hart and Marner will get some down-ballot votes. It’s gotta happen or the questions/concerns are bigger than anyone wants to contemplate just yet.
OK now do Tavares/Nylander
The Leafs’ game plan, by both logic and budget, has been that if Matthews and Marner draw the toughest matchup and game plan, William Nylander and John Tavares should be able to do some damage and control their minutes.
That also hasn’t been the case.
Boy, not at all. Nylander’s Game 4 may be the defining William Nylander Game, in that it’s so easy to see whatever you already think of the guy in his play. There was a universally shared clip of him pulling the ‘chute on a forecheck down five goals which, let’s be real, was as ridiculous as the internet made it out to be. For the love of god man, it’s the playoffs, take the bump for a chance to get the puck.
On the other hand, you know what you get with him, and he made two brilliant plays to score goals after that. If you like him you see him contributing to a comeback, if you don’t, you think they’re meaningless points earned with the game out of reach.
On John Tavares, though, I’m at a loss for the situation in which the Leafs find themselves with their captain right now. I know Sheldon Keefe has spoken about Tavares and Willy, and how he wants them to prioritize defence and keeping the puck out of their own net. Part of that, I think, is to take the pressure off their offence. I know Tavares has noted the “defence-first” stuff publicly, and that it’s really tight out there.
Enough of that, though.
Beating a dead horse or not, Tavares earns a lot, was a point-per-game player this year, and his minutes are supposed to be where the Leafs can find an advantage. Being underwater in his minutes is an obvious red flag for the Leafs. He was better in Game 4 than Game 3, but better than not-very-good isn’t going to cut it.
The discussion has started about whether to throw Marner on Tavares’ line in hopes of igniting a spark, and I believe it’s a legitimate option. It makes matching up against the Leafs harder, as their two best forwards would be on different lines. It’s been impossible to justify splitting Matthews and Marner for most of this season because they’ve been so awesome together. Now that they don’t look so awesome, would the Leafs do it? Would it get Tavares going? (If the answer were a clear “yes” they’d do it for sure, but unfortunately it isn’t.)
The D pairs
First, just the numbers: Through two games, Justin Holl has been the Leafs’ best D by “expected goals.” Over his two games, Timothy Liljegren has the Leafs’ worst number in that category. But early in Game 4, I was all but certain Holl was coming out for Liljegren again, seeing not just the early turnover but the lack of urgency from the Leafs big penalty killer. The question I wrote down about the initial 30 seconds of the game was “Did they not anticipate a push from Tampa?”
By the time the game was over, I’m less sure of what the Leafs will do on D.
For one, Ilya Lyubushkin struggled with some defensive reads, and wasn’t good with the puck on his stick. He was scratched in the regular season at times. And while Holl wasn’t great, he got better as the game progressed. I truly think this is an area where the staff will pick through shifts with a fine-toothed comb, look at some numbers, take some opinions, and have a very tough decision to make.
My gut is Liljegren draws back in, but I also think they love what Lyubushkin gives them from a physical standpoint, and that Holl hasn’t been good, bad, or anything, he’s just been Justin Holl.
Maybe Holl will come back out, but I don’t think there’s an obvious answer here.
What about the 4th line?
When you take out Jason Spezza, you lose an elite faceoff man and a good power play flank guy. Unfortunately, he hasn’t done anything of merit in his two appearances, and it’s hard to forget Keefe saying that their fourth lines have been best with Kyle Clifford in.
I like Clifford-Blackwell-Bunting just fine as a fourth line. But I can see a world where they give Bunting back to Matthews/Marner given their struggles without him. Clifford-Blackwell-Kase could be an option, with Kerfoot joining Nylander and Tavares?
Whatever it ends up being, I can see Spezza coming back out for Clifford (or Wayne Simmonds, if not both). If it’s both, the next name out might be Kase, who hasn’t quite found his stride in the series, and the team would need someone to play centre, which Blackwell can do.
Overall…
The Leafs story isn’t about these little lineup details. It’s about that good old fashioned intangible stuff now, the heart and the effort and the ability to raise their level and stay there. Whether this team can play with anyone or not is long-since proven to be a resounding “yes.” Will they? Well, that’s still up in the air.
Unfortunately, hockey isn’t as simple as controlling what you do, the other team gets a chance to play well too. And Game 4 was a reminder that the Lightning are a heck of a hockey team, the defending Cup champs, and aren’t just going to go away quietly.
At some point we should expect both teams to play well at the same time, which is the challenge for the Leafs – holding up their end of the bargain. You can be sure Tampa’s going to be good the rest of the way. And once that happens, and it’s close, can the Leafs find a way where they failed in Games 5 and 6 last season?
It feels to me like a close game is waiting in Game 5 and the scariest thing for Leafs fans has to be the haunting ghosts of playoffs past invoked in Game 4. Can they move past those? Are they different than years past? A week into the playoffs, and we’re still asking the same questions that were posed at the start of the season.
