General Manager Brad Treliving set the tone this season by doing the absolute bare minimum from training camp onward, culminating in a trade deadline where he made a grand total of three trades. The roster wasn\u2019t turned over nearly enough, and the only acquisition Treliving will make from another team this season is waiver claim Troy Stecher, unless we want to count Cayden Primeau and Sammy Blais (which I don\u2019t \u2014 they were warm bodies who were claimed and later lost to waivers).\u00a0<\/p>\n
They can\u2019t fix this now, obviously, with the deadline passed. But it doesn\u2019t mean we should be watching the exact same garbage night after night.<\/p>\n
Where to begin?<\/p>\n
How many more games will Morgan Rielly and Brandon Carlo be paired together? It\u2019s been over a year since the trade, and it hasn\u2019t looked good pretty much the entire time. What more is there to see at this point? McCabe-Carlo has at least looked like a credible matchup pairing at times. Ride it out, and find out if there\u2019s something there. The best-case scenario is that it\u2019s effective, and the team can potentially feel good about the duo for next season. The worst case is that they also show poorly, but at least we\u2019ve learned something.<\/p>\n
This basically applies across the board with the defensive pairings. It has been this way since the Olympic break, although Treliving did put on a brave face and suggest that the Leafs<\/a> decided to sell well before the break.\u00a0<\/p>\n The forward group and its deployment are an even bigger mess to sort through. With eight minutes left in a game that was over in the first period vs. Tampa, Jacob Quillan was clocking in at 6:39 of ice time while playing on a fourth line with Steven Lorentz and Calle Jarnkrok. In fact, the only reason his ice time was even that high is that he was receiving second-unit penalty-killing time. A third of Quillan\u2019s TOI by that point came shorthanded. What are the Leafs<\/a> learning about the player in that time? Craig Berube and Brad Treliving must be pretty special talent evaluators to assess Quillan in such limited minutes.<\/p>\n Yes, Quillan did get burned on the Lightning\u2019s second goal of the night. That is just a fact: he lost the draw and lost his man\u2014the goal-scorer\u2014in coverage. But let\u2019s rewind the sequence a little bit. Quillan went out for a defensive-zone faceoff one whistle beforehand, with his linemates, Lorentz and Jarnkrok, as well as Simon Benoit and Troy Stecher (a great start there, to be sure). He won the faceoff cleanly, but Benoit immediately iced it for no reason, in part because he was playing the Leafs<\/a>\u2018 no-tape-to-tape-passes-allowed breakout system. Then, Tampa Bay smartly sent out its top line immediately after the icing. Quillan lost the draw, and it was 2-1.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t absolving Quillan of blame. He made a bad play, and if we go all the way back to preseason, he did it then, too (in Ottawa), and it was something we flagged for improvement (i.e., don\u2019t lose your man after losing a defensive-zone draw). But how is the coaching staff positioning the player to succeed? With bad linemates, a bad defensive pairing, and bad deployment, Quillan ultimately got beaten on a goal and benched. John Tavares took a shift for him to start the second period.\u00a0<\/p>\n Is the hope here that Quillan is the next David Kampf? That\u2019s how the coaching staff is deploying him so far. We just watched Scott Laughton play in this role, struggle to produce, and his play sank like a stone before the egg splatted on Treliving\u2019s face this week with the tepid return on an asset he paid a first and a prospect for a year ago. Tonight, Laughton scored in his first game in LA and played more on the power play than he did this entire season with the Leafs<\/a> \u2014 a Leafs\u2019 power play that was dead last in the league some three months into this campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n Give Quillan some real linemates and ice time, and let\u2019s see what he can do. The Leafs aren\u2019t even giving this kid a chance, which is also ironic, given the Fraser Minten conversations in the market. Based on everything we\u2019ve seen from this staff, Minten would have been treated the exact same way and likely would\u2019ve suffered the same fate.\u00a0<\/p>\n Similarly, Alex Steeves became a full-time NHLer elsewhere after ripping up the AHL in Toronto. Right now, the Leafs have another similar story developing: Bo Groulx leads the entire AHL in five-on-five points and is tied for second in the league in goals. Are we going to keep watching a bunch of players who won\u2019t be on the team next season, rather than finding out whether Groulx could be?\u00a0<\/p>\n The argument isn\u2019t even about changing the lines, promoting some Marlies<\/a>, and maybe the team can finally win some games. It\u2019s that we know this lineup is not it, and it\u2019s full of players who should not return next season. The Leafs need to spend these remaining games experimenting and finding out if there is anything to build on for next season.<\/p>\n Is Groulx a player who can push his way into the mix moving forward? Is Quillan a viable NHL center, perhaps even a potential 3C? He should be pushing to play 15 minutes per night right now unless he clearly demonstrates he\u2019s in over his head. He\u2019s not demonstrating anything either way when he sees strictly defensive-zone draws with Lorentz and Jarnkrok in what ultimately amounted to 8:44 of ice time.<\/p>\n On defense, do we really need to watch a revolving cast of Benoit-Stecher-Myers on the third pairing rather than Marlies<\/a> such as Henry Thrun or William Villeneuve at this point? Again, maybe those two can\u2019t cut it. But let\u2019s learn that unequivocally and proceed from there, rather than watching whatever this is right now for 18 more games.<\/p>\n The Leafs have two regulation wins in their last 20 games \u2014 a quarter-season worth of hockey. They are on a seven-game losing streak. The last time this happened in Toronto, here was their roster:<\/p>\n Toronto’s lineup the last time they lost 7 in a row:<\/p>\n van Riemsdyk-Bozak-Kessel Brewer-Phaneuf Bernier
Lupul-McKegg-Booth
Panik-Komarov-Kozun
Lindstrom-Carrick-Bailey<\/p>\n
Gardiner-Rielly
MacWilliam-Erixon<\/p>\n
Reimer<\/p>\n