TORONTO — No team in the NHL scored more five-on-five goals than the Maple Leafs last season.
In fact, no team over the previous four seasons scored more five-on-five goals than the Leafs. They had 25 goals more than the next closest team (Colorado) and 42 more than the team after that (Florida).
In short, this was a team that — in the regular season, anyway — could always score and score a lot. They weren’t dead in any game because of it.
Which is what makes what’s going on in the early days of this season, but especially of late, so jarring. The Leafs suddenly can’t score any five-on-five goals (and until recently, struggled to score on the power play too). They have one five-on-five goal, total, in the last five games, and that one goal came from, you guessed it, Conor Timmins.
In other words, the Leafs don’t have a single five-on-five goal from their forwards in the last five games.
This team has been held to one five-on-five goal or fewer nine times already in the first 17 games.
Not only that, they’re aren’t generating a whole bunch of substance either, particularly in the last week or so. Some of that is no doubt tied to the absence of Auston Matthews, the greatest goal scorer around (especially at five-on-five). But this was going on even before Matthews came out of the lineup, though he was limited by the injury, whatever it is, before that.
Note the heat map on Tuesday night:
The Leafs rank 18th in shot attempts generated per 60 minutes at five on five, 14th in shots, 14th in high-danger attempts and 16th in expected goals. They are down from last season in every department.
“We want to score. We want to score more five-on-five, for sure,” Leafs coach Craig Berube said. “But at the same time, we can’t sabotage the game.”
Berube had just watched his team play maybe their worst game all season. He was still steamed about the giveaway by William Nylander just inside the Ottawa blue line that spurred the odd-man rush that led to the Senators’ first goal.
It was the kind of goal the Leafs haven’t given up a lot this season. Odd-man rushes against really have been few and far between. But the apparent cost of that less risky approach (the opposite of safe-is-death) is fewer chances the other way.
A lot fewer.
Once a team that overwhelmed opponents off the rush under Sheldon Keefe, the Leafs don’t seem to score at all that way these days.
The days of the Nylander breakaway are practically gone.
The Leafs feel far less explosive as a result. A 3-0 lead, like the one that Ottawa built up on Tuesday night, feels unsurmountable for this team. When these Leafs get down a lot, it doesn’t feel like they’re coming back.
Not like before.
Is the tradeoff worthwhile? It doesn’t feel like it, especially since that apparent riskiness wasn’t really something that hurt the Leafs in the playoffs.
“We gotta generate more attempts at the net, with people at the net and creating offence that way,” Berube said.
This also feels a little bit like a matter of personnel.
The Leafs aren’t as deep up front as they once were. They lost Tyler Bertuzzi in the offseason and didn’t replace him. And, so far at least, they haven’t gotten much in the way of depth contributions.
Nylander and Matthew Knies have combined for 12 of the team’s 31 five-on-five goals.
Max Domi doesn’t have a single five-on-five goal this season. Neither do Pontus Holmberg, Ryan Reaves or David Kämpf.
That’s four forwards playing every night, essentially (minus the odd game off for Reaves) without a goal at five-on-five. And it’s hard to see any of those players, maybe with the exception of Domi, scoring much moving forward.
There’s a cost to dressing a fourth line that includes both Kämpf and Reaves. It’s a line unlikely to score much or really even threaten. Which hurts even more when the third line, in all its various forms, struggles to score too.
The Leafs were counting on Nick Robertson to take another step and score even more than he did last season. But that hasn’t happened even a little so far. Robertson has one goal all season.
Bobby McMann had a flurry of three goals at five-on-five in the first three games he played this fall. He doesn’t have a goal since and hasn’t looked all that dangerous either.
The Leafs haven’t had Calle Järnkrok, a sneaky source of offence, at all this season. He was fifth on the team with 23 five-on-five goals the previous two seasons, trailing only the obvious four.
One of those four, John Tavares, has been less and less punchy at five-on-five in recent years. He has three such goals so far.
Ideally, Berube could build at least three lines with a reasonable chance to score every night. It’s just difficult to really make that work with the current personnel, all more so given injuries as well as Berube’s unwillingness to give Nylander a chance at centre.
Even Matthews was struggling to score much at all at five-on-five, with only two goals after punching in 38 last season. His usual running mate, Mitch Marner, hasn’t produced much there at all either. He has two five-on-five goals so far, the same number as Steven Lorentz, Morgan Rielly and the now injured-for-a-while Max Pacioretty.
It’s worth wondering how much of that, if anything, is Marner trying to adapt to the Berube framework – the whole “north-south” thing the new Leafs coach desires. Can Marner be Marner if he isn’t going east-west? Can Nylander? Or Matthews?
Perhaps the Leafs are still adjusting to their new coach and his philosophies, still trying to strike the right balance for an approach that’s aimed at the postseason. Or perhaps, under Berube’s direction, they’ve swung too far the other way and lost too much of what them special, all in the name of trying to score more when it matters.
—Stats and research courtesy of Natural Stat Trick
(Top photo: Nick Turchiaro / Imagn Images)
