Matthews and Marner shine, the PP boils, Campbell cooks: The Maple Leafs’ roadmap to beating the Lightning – The Athletic

So many things need to go right to win in the playoffs.

What will it take for the Maple Leafs to vanquish their demons and beat the two-time defending champs?

Let’s take a closer look at what needs to go right. The more, the better.

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Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner go bananas

If Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner are the two best players in the series, the Leafs’ chances of moving on will be high, obviously.

Matthews and Marner put together a pretty fine example of what that kind of dominance looks like back on April 4 in Tampa. That night, Matthews slipped three goals past Andrei Vasilevskiy, two of them set up by Marner.

Marner added a goal himself on a nifty steal-and-go from Matthews.

If the back-to-back Rocket Richard Trophy winner is going to do this, the Leafs will be hard to stop.

It didn’t seem to matter which line the Lightning threw out against Matthews, Marner, and Michael Bunting that night. Brayden Point. Anthony Cirelli. The Leafs top line did the damage.

Of course, one sure rival for the duo in this series was absent that night: Ryan McDonagh, one of the very best stoppers in hockey.

“To me, he’s the best defender that they have,” Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe said. “McDonagh knows exactly what his job is. He gets in the way and he’s gonna be physical and he’s gonna protect the net.”

Tampa will want McDonagh and partner Erik Cernak matched up against Matthews and Marner as often as possible. McDonagh went head-to-head with Matthews during a matchup in early November (Marner was playing with John Tavares that night) and shut him down.

Expected goals were 16 percent for the Leafs in the 11 minutes that Matthews was on the ice with McDonagh – and 77 percent when he wasn’t.

Things have changed quite a bit since then. For one, Matthews is long past the offseason wrist surgery that was still affecting his play in November. Marner also morphed into a monster scorer in the second half, all while still doing normal Marner things.

That’s the thing: Marner and Matthews were elite players last season when they faced Montreal. They’re even better this time around.

They force more turnovers and turn those looks into juicy offensive opportunities. They’re even more in sync after another full-ish season together.

“You can tell the way they move the puck as they’re exiting the zone and the way they move it within the neutral zone,” Morgan Rielly said of their chemistry at one point this season. “There’s a lot of great lines that don’t really do that. They go cross-ice a lot. They use each other. They cross under one another. When they’re confident and playing well, it really translates into every zone.”

Dominate the Matthews-Marner minutes and the Leafs will be in good shape. It’s the one line where they carry at least some sort of advantage. And you can bet Keefe will play them even more than he did in the regular season.

With home-ice advantage, Keefe can try to swap out some shifts against McDonagh for those against the less-fearsome (though not physically) Zach Bogosian.

Not having Bunting, in all likelihood, to start the series dings the unit a bit. His edge, energy, and instincts offensively blended perfectly with Matthews and Marner. Alex Kerfoot hasn’t spent much time with either player, though he is smart and adaptable.

Matthews will certainly need a little more luck on his side than he’s had in previous playoffs. The 24-year-old shot 2.9 percent in seven games against the Habs last year, 7.4 percent against the Blue Jackets in 2020, and 3.7 percent two years before that in another seven-game series against the Bruins.

The Leafs win the power-play war

Another development that could propel the Leafs into the second round: Their power play can really cook this time.

Take a second to recall how funky things were on the power play heading into last year’s playoffs. The Leafs hobbled into that Montreal series with one of the worst units in the league.

Things are much different now. This is the No. 1 power play in the league.

The top group is a shape-shifting monster that’s no longer predictable or entirely dependent on one thing – i.e. the Matthews blast. In fact, over the final 30 games of the season, William Nylander led the team with seven power-play goals, followed by Matthews and John Tavares with four apiece.

The Leafs scored four times on 11 chances against the Bolts’ penalty kill, though one was in OT and another came from Ilya Mikheyev during that recent 8-1 shellacking.

Because the Lightning own a pretty wicked power play themselves, one that’s especially hot coming into this series, winning the power-play war could be a deciding factor in this series.

Jack Campbell is Andrei Vasilevskiy’s equal (or pretty close)

The Leafs haven’t won the goalie matchup in any of their five consecutive playoff defeats.

They head into this one with, clearly, the second-best guy. Andrei Vasilevskiy is as good as it gets, a 6-foot-3, 225-pound rock star who dominated during Tampa’s back-to-back Stanley Cup runs.

Jack Campbell doesn’t necessarily need to best that guy. He’s got an offence in front of him that might need only a par performance. Just solid — not unlike how Campbell played down the stretch (7-0-2, with a .915 save percentage after he returned from a rib injury and late-season reset).

Campbell just needs to make the saves he’s supposed to make.

Keep the bad goals to a minimum.

Campbell had those moments against the Habs last spring. So did Frederik Andersen in the playoffs before that. Cut those out and keep it close with Vasilevskiy and one clear Lightning advantage dissipates.

“I’m just trying to do the best I can,” Campbell said. “I have total faith in the guys in front of me. We all do our jobs, and I have total belief that we can get the job done.”

Sheldon Keefe outmaneuvers Jon Cooper

Keefe noted recently how different his third NHL playoff series will be from the two that preceded it.

No. 1: The Leafs will have fans at Scotiabank Arena this time around after mostly empty buildings in 2020 and 2021. Home-ice advantage should mean a little more.

No. 2: The head coach has a staff he chose fully in place. Keefe inherited Dave Hakstol and Paul McFarland from Mike Babcock when he took over midway through the 2019-20 season. He brought Manny Malholtra and Paul MacLean in ahead of his first full season. Dean Chynoweth and Spencer Carbery were added this season. These are his guys.

Keefe will be facing the league’s gold standard behind the bench right now in Jon Cooper. No easy opponent, obviously, and one with loads more playoff experience in the NHL.

Keefe pressed a lot of the right buttons during a record-setting regular season. Decision-making from behind the bench becomes a lot more fraught in the playoffs. The margin for error gets thinner than ever. And throughout those first two playoff series, Keefe wavered between doing too much and not enough.

The Leafs coach is already making some interesting choices ahead of Game 1. He appears set to give Ondrej Kase a go on the second line. Kase hasn’t played since mid-March because of a concussion. Sunday marked his first full practice.

The prospective line of Tavares, Kase, and Mikheyev has spent zero time together, though Kase and Mikheyev have both played a fair bit with Tavares.

Related: Keefe seems inclined to keep William Nylander rolling on a third unit with Pierre Engvall and David Kampf.

He’s also planning to roll out Kyle Clifford and Wayne Simmonds on a fourth line centered by Colin Blackwell. It’s admittedly an attempt to match Tampa’s physicality in what Keefe expects will be a “borderline violent” series.

Keefe will need to figure out quickly if Jake Muzzin can handle the strain of trying to slow down Steven Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov — and be ready to pivot if not. Other looming decisions could include whether to reconnect Tavares and Nylander, whether to dress Timothy Liljegren and/or Ilya Lyubushkin over Justin Holl, how to match up with that Tampa top line, and how to react if Matthews and Marner — or the team at large — are somehow stymied early in the series.

Choose right more often than not and the Cooper edge disappears.

The fourth line survives

Tampa owns a legit fourth line, maybe the best there is in the NHL.

Physicality, energy, general peskiness, and the ability to put a few pucks in the net. Corey Perry, Patrick Maroon, and Pierre-Edouard Bellemare combine to bring a bit of everything, including three goals in four games against the Leafs.

Hold that line to a draw in the head-to-head fourth line showdown and Keefe will be happy. Score the odd goal and muster meaningful, momentum-turning energy from the bottom of the lineup and the Leafs coach will be thrilled.

Are Clifford and Simmonds, playing with Blackwell, the answer? The Leafs were hammered (35 percent expected goals) in their limited minutes together this season. A trio like that may be nasty, but seems unlikely to get much done offensively.

Simmonds totaled one goal and four points over his last 39 games. Clifford mustered one goal and three points in his 23 games.

At some point, Jason Spezza will get an opportunity. And in fact, the most effective of the various fourth-line combos down the stretch featured Spezza, Blackwell, and Clifford (59 percent).

This might seem like a very marginal part of the series. And in some ways it is. But if the Leafs can’t roll their fourth line out every now and again and not see the ice get tilted, Tampa gains a clear edge.

John Tavares and/or William Nylander shine

It’s still not clear if Tavares and Nylander will play together regularly in this series or not.

Last week, Keefe said he was leaning toward reuniting them after a month-long absence. At Sunday’s practice, they were back apart.

Regardless of where they start, Tavares and Nylander will hook back up from time to time throughout the series. Keefe regularly sprinkled Nylander in for shifts with Tavares over the last month.

Together or apart, the Leafs need them to produce.

A rocking performance from Tavares and Nylander and suddenly the Lightning have to worry about more than just Matthews and Marner.

Mikheyev could be a sneaky difference-maker playing alongside Tavares. He’s never looked better in the NHL, finishing with a career-best 21 goals in only 53 games during the regular season.

Mikheyev was a non-factor in his first two postseasons. He’s still searching for his first playoff point.

Keeping Tavares and Nylander apart signals Keefe’s desire for a third line, led by Nylander, that can actually produce. It seems like a lot to ask Kase to come back after six weeks of inaction and play second-line minutes and competition straight away. He’s also proven he can put the puck in the net, which gives the Leafs one more threat in the middle six.

There’s no better time than now for Tavares to have his first real playoff moment with the Leafs.

He put together a solid, if unspectacular, series against Patrice Bergeron and the Bruins in 2019, he was quiet in the 2020 loss to Columbus and he was hurt for all but three minutes of the 2021 series with the Habs.

A punchy performance now would be big for him, and for the Leafs, especially if it’s coupled with a second straight headlining showing from Nylander.

The D holds up

The biggest question of all on D is Muzzin, and whether he can a) hold up physically playing every other night and b) still handle high-end competition.

Maybe 75 percent of Muzzin will be enough. Maybe he kills just enough plays before they have a chance to get started. Maybe he limits net-front intruders with his 6-foot-3, 226-pound frame, and is just spry enough to stay in front of Tampa’s speedy forwards.

Stamkos and Kucherov are a massive challenge though. Nobody was hotter than Stamkos down the stretch. Nobody put up more points than Kucherov over the past two playoffs.

If Muzzin holds up, the Leafs are in business. If not, a quick pivot — to less Muzzin and more Mark Giordano — will be a must. One thing I’ve been wondering: Is Muzzin at 75 percent really a better option than Giordano, even at age 38? I’m not so sure. There’s a case to be made that the Leafs should start with Muzzin in a reduced role.

His leash will — or should — be short.

Giordano and Timothy Liljegren have shown they can swallow up secondary competition together. This will be – by far – Liljegren’s biggest test in the NHL. He needs to show that he won’t be outmuscled around his own net.

This kinda thing can’t happen:

For Ilya Lyubushkin, bouncer duties around the blue paint aren’t in question. But can he keep mistakes with the puck to a minimum when the pace heats up?

At the very least, Keefe and his staff have created options with all their experimentation. TJ Brodie and Holl can reunite, if needed. So can Rielly and Brodie. Heck, maybe Brodie and Giordano hop in the time machine and get back together. Rasmus Sandin is inching closer to availability.

On paper, this looks like the best defence the Leafs have had in recent memory. Now’s the time to prove it.

The Leafs stay healthy

Good fortune here is almost a must. Injuries stung the Leafs, badly, in those 2020 and 2021 series.

Tavares was lost moments into Game 1 against Montreal. Nick Foligno, the team’s big trade deadline addition, missed three games. Muzzin injured his groin in Game 6. He also missed the final three games of the Columbus series a year earlier.

Muzzin enters these playoffs having missed most of the second half due to multiple concussions and an undisclosed ailment.

“He continues to battle through, and he’s gonna have to continue to do that,” Keefe said of Muzzin. “He’s not really playing at 100 percent. That’s the reality.”

Can he stay healthy-ish?

The Leafs can’t really afford any issues up front, not with Bunting on the mend and Kase still something of a question mark.

As with any team at this time of year, the Leafs primarily need their most important players to stay healthy – Matthews, Marner, Campbell, Rielly, etc. If that happens, along with some of the other items in play here, their chances of moving on to the second round for the first time since 2004 rise higher.

(Top photo: Winslow Townson / USA Today)

Stats and research courtesy of Natural Stat Trick, Hockey Reference, Stat Head, and Evolving Hockey

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