Toronto Maple Leafs: Babcock Is Mishandling The Leafs Defence
Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock might be one of, if not the, best coaches in the entire world. That doesn’t excuse his horrible deployment, particularly against Winnipeg.
The Toronto Maple Leafs were outplayed against Winnipeg at 5v5 for the majority of the night. They had trouble generating scoring chances at the same rate as Winnipeg and part of that fault lies with the coach.
Jake Gardiner is the Leafs best defender, not Morgan Rielly. Eventually Rielly should be, but realistically that’s not the case right now.
Playing Gardiner for 13:46 should be considered a crime. It was a self inflicted possession wound by Babcock.
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The Leafs came in as one of the best possession clubs through the first few games. They were playing a team that was one of the worst.
What contributed to the Jets having a chance to level the field was Gardiner playing the amount of minutes that Matt Hunwick should be playing.
As much praise as the young players and the coach gets, it means nothing if the team isn’t going to play their best players.
The defensive pairings, as they’re set up now, are designed for failure.
I’m a Martin Marincin fan, but he’s not suited for first line duties – though he’s a better partner than Hunwick for Rielly. Hunwick isn’t suited for anything above the third pairing.
Nikita Zaitsev and Connor Carrick are better at generating positive offensive play than Hunwick and Marincin, which is the current trend of success in the NHL.
It’s already been proven that Marincin can babysit Hunwick. Reworking the pairings to Rielly/Zaitsev/Gardiner/Carrick in the top four would be more likely to cause trouble for the opposition than the current pairings.
The Leafs defensive group was their biggest weakness heading into the season, but the team doesn’t have to make it worse by playing Hunwick seven minutes more in a game than Jake Gardiner.
Even though it’s only been three games, it’s time for Mike Babcock to have some self reflection and ask himself what he truly wants from this defense. He’s a competitor and he wants to win, but his pairings right now aren’t in line with that character trait.
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