Toronto Maple Leafs need to find a spark before it’s too late

The Toronto Maple Leafs are lacking energy early in the 2019-20 season. They need to find it if they want to reach their goal of bringing the Stanley Cup to Toronto.

Ah, the small sample size analogy. Don’t you just love it? Fans use it when they try to explain to others the mediocre start their beloved team is having. “It’s just a small sample size, dude. We’ll turn it around.” Well, what happens when the small sample size becomes the actual sample of what your team is? You get the Toronto Maple Leafs.

For starters, you would hope the coaching staff starts to make adjustments and the players follow suit and play better. Maybe you change philosophies and mix things up to form a spark. Or maybe you just have a stubborn coach who decides to stick with what he knows and loves. I’m talking to you, Mike Babcock.

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You’d like to think that going into his fifth season with the Maple Leafs, having won zero playoff series in three appearances with the club, and not to mention not even making it to the second round since 2009 carried over with the Red Wings, he would change something.

“Small sample size” is a term that gets thrown around. Usually, it doesn’t mean much because well, it’s a small sample size. You always have to give the benefit of the doubt that a team will eventually turn things around and play to their potential, but sometimes, the small sample size remains the same.

For years now, the Maple Leafs have been brutal in their own zone and defensively as a whole. It seems general manager Kyle Dubas jas gone more down the route of speed and skill to build his team, but time and time again we always see the teams that make it the furthest in the Stanley Cup Playoffs also have toughness and a defense-first mentality.

Dubas has made his fair share of movements on the blueline the last two seasons bringing in Jake Muzzin, Tyson Barrie, and Cody Ceci while parting ways with Jake Gardiner, Ron Hainsey, and Nikita Zaitsev so you can’t say he isn’t trying to improve. But yet, they’re still below average in the d-zone. There has been a lot of roster turnover this season compared to last, but that’s why you have a coach like Babcock to help with that.

He has championship pedigree and should be able to get these guys to start playing better to their potential, and he has. But, it’s spotty and it doesn’t show when it matters most. The leads going into the later periods and important playoff games are really what I am referencing to.

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Let’s go back to the small sample size I started off with and use it here. The Maple Leafs have now completed the first ten games of the 2019-20 season and from a points perspective, not much is different from last season’s first ten games. Currently, they are 5-3-2 whereas last year through ten they were 7-3-0. Not much of a change right? But optically, it’s different.

They once again look sloppy in their own zone, not aggressive as they should be on pucks in the corners, and they just flat out look like an average NHL team. The Maple Leafs need a big boost of energy to their lineup – and they need it soon.

The Atlantic Division is no joke, but this year it got a lot harder. Tampa Bay and Boston are still the same old dominating teams. Buffalo may actually be for real as long as they don’t collapse like last year, Montreal has improved, and Florida is significantly underachieving. Who knows, maybe the Panthers stay like that all season, but either way, the Atlantic just went from difficult to elite.

The Maple Leafs have a talented roster, there’s no doubt about that. But a playoff spot is no guarantee at all. They need to get their act together and here is what I think needs to be done in order to create a new energy around the team.

Babcock has to start adapting to situations. Specifically the back-to-back goaltending starts. Now, I understand this isn’t necessarily a major change that can result in a spark of energy but having the best goaltender of the two playing against the more important matchups can give the players in front of them more confidence.

Yes, for all five seasons, so far, Mike Babcock has remained consistent in pushing his philosophy of starting your top goaltender on the first night of back-to-backs. But this season, the Leafs have four sets in the month of October. After tonight’s game against the Boston Bruins, they will have one more back-to-back set this month when they welcome Patrick Marleau and the Sharks into town for Marleau’s first game back in Toronto on Friday night. They will leave for Montreal and take on the Habs the following night.

Michael Hutchinson will most likely get the start for the blue and white on Saturday and that means he will have played Montreal, Washington, Boston and Montreal again this month. Three of those games are against divisional opponents and every point matters in the Atlantic like I outlined above. I understand Babcock is all about consistency and his own philosophy, but you have to adapt on the fly and bag points early into the season.

With Tavares being absent for at least the next two weeks, Matthews and Marner should deserve more opportunities to play with each other. Not just for two minutes here and there and in desperate situations like we’ve seen over the last two games, but for extended periods of time. Combined, Matthews and Marner make $22.52 million. Let them show you why they make that much, together.

One could argue that last year Tavares and Marner fed off each other perfectly and had career years, so why would you break that up? Any coach in their right mind wouldn’t even think to break it up and I am not saying that either. With Tavares out, it’s an opportunity to experiment. The Maple Leafs look completely flat and they need that spark to get going. Not trying to sound like a broken record, just saying. Once Zach Hyman becomes ready to play for the first time this year, it’s the lock of the century that he will be reunited with Marner and Tavares once again.

But in the meantime, Tavares and Hyman are out. So the Leafs and Babcock should go to the drawing board. We’ve seen powerhouse teams like Colorado, Boston and Tampa Bay load up on one line. Let’s just stay within the division here for a minute. Kucherov logged 128 points last season, the most since the ‘95-’96 season and a Hart Trophy to go with it. Alongside him now is Brayden Point, who had a career-high in goals, assists and total points last year and one of the best natural goal scorers in Steven Stamkos.

That’s quite a loaded line and they torched the Leafs a couple of weeks back with 11 points between the three of them in a 7-3 thumping. There’s not much to say about Boston’s top line, they show it almost every night. Patrice Bergeron is one of the most underrated players in the NHL. Last season he matched his career-high in goals with 32 and reached a new career-high in points with 79.

This was done playing alongside Brad Marchand and David Pastrnak who also had new career highs in goals and points with 38 and 81. Marchand had career-high in assists with 64 and in points as well with exactly 100. Interesting. All these players had incredible seasons playing with each other.

Yes, Marner and Tavares had the same type of seasons in comparison, but Tavares also had great seasons with significantly lesser talent in New York. We know what he can do. Let’s see Matthews, Marner, and Nylander together now and put themselves in the conversation with the other elite lines in the NHL.

It’s not much, but it’s something. Sometime’s it’s the little things that can get a team going. Maybe they’re getting tired of hearing the same old stuff from Babcock, but I highly doubt he is going anywhere soon despite another first-round exit. So in the meantime, give these little things a shot and maybe it will have a domino effect for the rest of the team.