The Toronto Maple Leafs completely demolished the Washington Capitals last night.
Auston Matthews scored five points, and the Toronto Maple Leafs had a tremendous game. As usual, I’ll leave the game recaps to the 2500 other people who want to do them and focus solely on my observations on the game.
This one was significant because coach Sheldon Keefe finally faced reality and addressed his biggest problem: TJ Brodie’s decline.
Brodie was rightfully scratched, but the surprise inclusion of Conor Timmins was the true drama.
The story isn’t TJ Brodie getting scratched, but Conor Timmins Playing
Timmins has not played since January 24th and has been diagnosed with mono. The issue about Timmins is that he doesn’t get much attention; he’s rarely written or discussed as a guy who has to play, and he’s often an afterthought on the Leafs’ blue line.
Despite that, he has been the Leafs’ most effective defenceman this season. That’s correct, Timmins has the team’s greatest stats. Granted, he’s recorded numbers in limited and sheltered usage, but the truth is that when deployed correctly, he brings a lot of value to the lineup.
Especially as a right-handed puck mover on a team that lacks just that.
He was matched with Simon Benoit last night and had a terrific success. Benoit skates quite quickly and is not as slow as other players his age. He can’t move the puck, but he’s aggressive and difficult to play against. Timmins is the complete opposite, and for one game, they appeared to complement each other.
Timothy Liljegren led the Leafs in ice time last night, although Timmins and Benoit were close behind him. The Leafs seemed to use all three pairings equally, but Keefe appeared to keep Timmins and Benoit away from Ovechkin.
This deployment was a huge success. With Timmins on the ice, the Leafs controlled 61% of the puck, 65% of the shots, 68% of the expected goals, and won 1-0. (All metrics from naturalstattrick.com).
Timmins’ puck-moving abilities are in short supply on this squad, and he deserves to play more. I like the notion of having him and Benoit as a third pairing permanently.
What I don’t enjoy is giving Joel Edmunson so much ice time. Edmundson and Liljegren battled mightily in their higher roles last night. Edmundson had 9-3 shots and 2-0 goals.
This line, however, was forced to share nearly half of their minutes with the fourth line. It was not pretty. The Kampf-Gregor-Dewar line was absolute garbage. I understand Ryan Reaves is not an NHL player, but neither is Noah Gregor. What exactly is Keefe doing here?
Keefe doesn’t have a consistent go-to defense pairing when he pairs McCabe with Rielly, rests Brodie, and wants to keep Timmins and Benoit from facing top competition.
This left the Edmundson/Liljegren partnership in the unfortunate position of having to play against Alex Ovechkin’s line for about half of the game (Rielly and McCabe got the other half and fared much better), which was not pretty.
Ovechkin’s line totally crushed the Edmunson/Liljmegren duo to an embarrassing degree. Edmundson is simply too slow to compete with top-tier players. He isn’t even a good #6 or #7 option; he’s one of the poorest players in the NHL, but he compensates by being cruel and large.
However, a decade and a half of hockey statistics has taught us that elite superstars do not benefit teams as much as you might assume. The stay-at-home defender is unable to get the puck out of his zone, so he ends up playing more defense than necessary. In contrast, the less trustworthy puck-mover, who cannot defend as well, ends up benefiting the team more by requiring less total defense to be played. Even the finest defense will eventually be scored on, but you cannot be scored on when the puck is in the opposing team’s zone.
If I were Keefe, I’d prefer more Timmins and less Edmundson. Brodie is OK and should play; he simply shouldn’t be used as a top player. TJ Brodie is still superior than Edmundson, Lyubushkin, and Benoit, thus this is most likely a one-time occurrence. One thing is certain: the Leafs need more Conor Timmins.
