SAN JOSE — A day before the Leafs faced the Sharks, practice was about to end when a frustrated Sheldon Keefe ended things.
“Everyone here, please,” he said.
The Leafs coach wasn’t happy with what he was seeing. The execution was not there. He expressed his displeasure, urgently. Then he did the drill again. This time it was executed successfully. And that was it. Practice was over.
A day later, his team couldn’t execute against a Sharks team that was near the basement of the league. This, after losses already this season to the Arizona Coyotes and Montreal Canadiens, two teams that finished at the bottom of the standings last season.
The Leafs have yet to really look like the Leafs this season. Nothing like the team that put up a franchise record 115 points last season. Instead, they have seemed lost, disjointed, uninspired. It’s not going very well at the moment.
“Obviously, we want to build traction,” Auston Matthews said after the loss to the Sharks, which came three nights after a heartbreaking loss in Las Vegas. “I just don’t think we’ve prepared a full 60-minute game. I think in-game consistency and momentum swings and things are hurting us a little bit right now.”
The Leafs fell behind 26 seconds into the game in San Jose, then fell into a 3-1 hole.
“I think there were too many ups and downs, not a lot of consistency throughout the game,” Matthews continued. “There were times when we did good things, obviously, and we had good possession and some good offensive plays. There were also times when we were a bit stagnant and couldn’t get much going.”
(D. Ross Cameron-USA TODAY Sports)
Keefe’s lineup modification had only one effect.
The addition of Alex Kerfoot to the front line helped spur two goals: one by David Kampf, the team’s unlikely five-on-five leader, another by Mitch Marner. It wasn’t a dominant outing, though.
As Matthews pointed out, the Leafs struggled to turn one good shift into another.
More concerning was how things went for the only line that remained intact: the trio of John Tavares, William Nylander and Nick Robertson.
They were trapped in their own end for most of the night, to the point where Keefe had to remove both Nylander and Robertson from the line in the third period and replace them — with Kerfoot and Calle Jarnkrok — for draws of defensive zone
Tavares’ line had to take on an unusual share of defensive zone matchups due to the lineup restructuring. The coaching staff wasn’t going to send the tough stuff to the line that featured Michael Bunting and Denis Malgin. And they certainly aimed to get Matthews’ group on offense as often as possible.
So Tavares and company were tasked with more of that load (38 percent offensive zone faceoff percentage). Shot attempts were 13-4 for San Jose when Tavares, Nylander and Robertson were on the ice.
Nylander, notably, was held without a shot or attempt. Tavares is still looking for his first five-on-five goal of the season.
“I thought San Jose’s top players gave us a hard time today,” Keefe said. “Every time these guys got on the ice they tilted the ice.”
That sounds, indirectly, not too different from the message Keefe delivered after the loss to the Coyotes. San Jose’s best players, Logan Couture, Erik Karlsson, Timo Meier, were all playing against the Leafs’ best players, and they were winning those minutes.
Keefe may have to go back to the drawing board, whether it’s dropping Michael Bunting back to the top line or finding a different look for the Tavares group. It’s probably time to give Nicolas Aube-Kubel another look at the bottom of the lineup.
The only line that should definitely be maintained for now is the one that reunited Kampf with Pierre Engvall. That unit, with Zach Aston-Reese filling things in, was San Jose’s most successful group. Despite only getting one offensive zone faceoff, the line finished with an expected field goal mark approaching 90 percent.
For the second straight game, the Leafs gave up too many good things, too many high-quality chances (although two of San Jose’s four goals came on the power play).
“We have to figure out those turnovers,” Marner said. “We’re giving a lot of teams a lot of weird hurries, a lot of chances our way. We’re not helping our D much, especially the forwards. We won’t go back to the pucks. They were much more hungry for the check. That’s what our team has been so good at the last two years, getting the pucks back and creating offense off of them. The forward group, we have to be much more hungry on the puck. We’ve got to create a lot more chances to get on the ice and help our D a little bit more.”
“We didn’t play our game the first two periods,” added an uncharacteristically open Kampf. “I feel like in the third we came back a little bit and started playing a little bit harder. It wasn’t good the whole game.”
Keefe hasn’t been happy with the way the puck is moving from the D to the forwards. In other words, how the team starts its attack. It’s what, in his estimation, has slowed down the offense and caused his team to spend more time playing defense.
The Leafs are sitting at about 50 percent of their projected goals for the season. not great Last season this figure was 56 percent.
“We have to execute,” Keefe said. “You look at the game, see how many times we don’t execute the passes. We’ve got a lot of really good players, a lot of skill on our team, and we’re just not connecting on passes, like tape-to-tape passes where we’re making the wrong decision and passing. the wrong man, or we hold on too long and it breaks. This is a big problem for us.
“Our inability to move the puck up the ice efficiently is slowing down our whole game offensively and it’s also hurting our game defensively because we’re just stressed. The second period we couldn’t get our defense off the ice because we couldn’t move the puck up.”
While Marner pinned those issues on the forwards, Keefe said, “He starts on the D. His first touch (with the puck) has to be better.”
The defense looks overexposed right now, with Jake Muzzin and Timothy Liljegren out with injuries. They’re two of the usual top six (or seven) in the mix, including the second-best defender (TJ Brodie is first right now) on the team.
The Leafs have no choice but to continue to lean on a struggling Justin Holl until Liljegren returns next month. They will need to find an outside replacement for Muzzin if he doesn’t return this season.
(D. Ross Cameron-USA TODAY Sports)
Keefe didn’t think switching pairings would solve the problems the Leafs had, but it’s worth considering even if the options aren’t exactly obvious.
First, it would be to split Morgan Rielly and Brodie in the name of balance.
Option 1: Deal Brodie, the most reliable defenseman the Leafs have, to Holl.
But then who plays with Rielly? Rasmus Sandin on his offside?
Option 2: Bring Brodie and Mark Giordano together.
Then again, who plays Rielly though?
Option 3: Keep Rielly and Brodie together, but trade Sandin for Giordano.
Is there enough mobility and skill to move the puck in a Giordano-Holl combo with Holl struggling like he is right now? Can the Leafs play Sandin and Mete together?
Option 4: Split Rielly and Brodie, but go to the wing by sliding Rielly to the right side until Liljegren is ready to play. Rielly, remember, spent some time at right during training camp and the offseason.
Giordano – RiellyBrodie – HollSandin – Mete
Like we said, there aren’t many great options.
Clearly, the Leafs feel they can only throw to Giordano. He was supposed to play more in Muzzin’s absence. He ended up playing less. That might have to change.
Another issue is that the Leafs’ power play has yet to start, although Matthews’ one-time outburst was encouraging.
About the most positive evolution of the beginning of the season has been the play of Ilya Samsonov. There aren’t many players with roaring starts. Keefe has felt the need to push hard from day one.
It has been a picture-perfect start, without a doubt.
It’s still October, still 74 games to go, still early. And the Leafs got off to a similar start last season before turning things around.
“It’s not an excuse, is it?” Kampf said. “The season has already started, so we have to be ready from the start of the season.”
Statistics and research courtesy of Natural Stat Trick
(Photo: Kavin Mistry / NHLI via Getty Images)