Another strong showing from Toronto’s top forwards.
Despite some less than stellar puck-moving from their defensemen, the Toronto Maple Leafs were able to control the majority of scoring chances on Wednesday night, defeating the Winnipeg Jets by a final score of 3-1.
The reunited top line of Hyman-Matthews-Marner got off to a hot start tonight, getting two pucks behind Connor Hellebuyck in the game’s first 10 minutes. From there, the Leafs were able to settle things down and prevent the Jets’ forwards from generating quality chances, particularly in the third period.
You know the bit by now. I like using individual player grades to help guide my thoughts on these Leafs games, so let’s start with the most impactful.
5 Stars
Game Puck: Mitch Marner (RW, #16) — On nights like these, it’s really fun to evaluate Marner’s play. His creativity with the puck on his stick when he’s skating through dangerous areas is unparalleled on this team.
Who even thinks to make this pass?
He made Logan Stanley look like…Logan Stanley on this play.
All kidding aside, it takes a special talent to break down the opposing team’s structure. Marner pulls off backdoor passes like these with regularity, which is why he picks up so many primary assists.
What impresses me more about his play this season is how responsible he’s become defensively while still providing that elite offense. Dom Luszczyszyn put out his latest NHL Awards ballot today, ranking Marner second in Selke consideration based on his elite defensive numbers.
The Leafs don’t give up many chances when he’s on the ice, thanks in large part to his positioning and active stick to pick off passes. For example, there were multiple times tonight when Marner got himself to the right spot and broke up a pass through the middle of the slot.
If you’re looking to dive into more video on this topic, I’d recommend checking out this article from Scott Wheeler.
Zach Hyman (LW, #11) — It can get repetitive saying the same things about Hyman game after game, but it’s because of his remarkable consistency without the puck. I’m not sure if he’s the best F1 forechecker in the league, but he’s definitely the most impactful player in puck pursuit on Toronto.
There were several times he disrupted opponents’ passes on the breakout, resulting in his line spending more time with the puck in the offensive zone. There’s a reason the line with Hyman always has positive 5v5 metrics; he tilts the ice with his play.
Auston Matthews (C, #34) — Was he the third-best player on his line tonight? It sounds crazy to say. Then again, when Marner is having one of his magical nights and Hyman is wreaking havoc on the forecheck, sometimes you just have to get out of the way and make yourself available as a shooting option.
Matthews accomplished that tonight, which is why he picked up a primary assist off the post and this garbage goal.
They don’t ask how, they ask how many. That last one puts him on pace for 40 goals in 53 games this season.
I say he does it.
Alex Kerfoot (C, #15) — Public Service Announcement: Alex Kerfoot shot the puck.
And it went in!
We’ve all been giving the poor guy a rough time this year, so it was nice to see him have a strong performance tonight. The PK2 duo of him and Ilya Mikheyev has been effective this season. They’ve generated so many chances shorthanded, although the Soupman hasn’t been able to convert on any of those.
Maybe Kerfoot should be looking to shoot more, which was clearly his mentality in this game. I’m so used to seeing zeroes on the scoresheet next to his name in the Individual Shots and Chances column. He fired four pucks towards the net tonight, which makes him less predictable offensively. Sure, some of those are muffins from distance, but I’d rather the defense respect the threat of him shooting than automatically assuming he’s going to pass it, which has been the book on him for years.
4 Stars
Alex Galchenyuk (LW, #12) — Montreal fans must be shaking their heads watching this version of Galchenyuk. He’s been a legitimate presence on the forecheck for Toronto, putting in multiple strides after he crosses the blue line and finding a way to get his stick onto loose pucks.
We all know he’s a skilled player in transition. What we’re not used to seeing is Galchenyuk block a shot in the defensive zone and work hard to get it back. The fact that he’s looked good without the puck in these first few games is an excellent sign, especially considering what he can do with it.
Jack Campbell (G, #36) — Aside from a screened point shot on the power play, “Soupy” was perfect in this game. He made a few big stops on one-timers from Blake Wheeler, Mark Scheifele, and Kyle Connor. There were a few mad scrambles in front that Campbell had to deal with, but he managed to locate the puck and freeze it for a whistle.
He’s now 7-0-0 as a starter this season for Toronto. Wins are obviously a terrible stat for measuring goaltending performance, so how about .919? That’s his save percentage in 71 starts as an NHL goalie. Not too shabby.
3 Stars
Tavares-Nylander — We all know the Leafs are looking to add a player to this line. Justin Bourne wrote about it today, arriving at the same conclusion that I’m sure you have. They don’t need another talented linemate to make them good; they need another talented linemate because they’re so good.
For anyone worried about John Tavares‘ ability to make plays off the rush, I think it’s safe to say he’s finding his groove again.
His stick-handling was on point tonight. There were a few instances where he deked his way into high danger areas of the ice.
William Nylander wasn’t as dynamic at 5v5 as we’re used to seeing, although I loved his composure on the power play. The Leafs put all their stars on PP1 tonight, with Nylander running things from the left half-wall and Marner dropping down below the goal line (technically the “net front,” but he never really stands there).
They didn’t score, but I loved some of the give-and-go sequences Nylander and Marner were able to pull off. Sometimes the two would even switch places, which seemed to really throw off opposing penalty killers.
Jason Spezza (RW, #19) — After breaking free for a 2-on-1 early in the game, Spezza drew a hooking penalty. On the power play, his simple approach to gaining the zone worked well; skate north as fast as you can and then make a pass after stepping over the blueline.
When the Leafs got set up in formation, he was able to thread a cross-seam pass to Galchenyuk, who wasn’t able to corral for the one-timer. Spezza also made an impact on the penalty kill, which isn’t common for him outside of faceoff wins.
These are the type of high-level passes he can still complete at age 37. It’s why he’s been so productive despite his limited usage.
Ilya Mikheyev (LW, #65) — Playing with Pierre Engvall and Wayne Simmonds can’t be easy. No one on that line could complete a pass, resulting in this weird playstyle where the line would try to cycle in the offensive zone but couldn’t create much of anything.
The one clip I did want to pull up was another edition of the Mikheyev Shot Selection Escapades.
You probably thought I was going to show you a floater from the boards. Nope, I’m proud of Mikheyev for getting himself to middle-ice more often in the offensive zone.
This isn’t a Grade-A chance, but it’s a high-percentage play for the Simmonds deflection in front. Considering how often we’ve seen the Soupman skate himself into bad ice and launch 0.01 xG shots from terrible locations, it’s nice to see him take a step in the right direction from a shot quality standpoint.
The Dermott-Bogosian Pairing — A few of my friends messaged me after the game to let me know Travis Dermott only played 7:56 tonight. Thanks, guys — I had no idea.
I actually liked the way Dermott played in the first half. He was assertive with his play up the ice, even completing a few stretch passes. Then in the back half of the game it looked like neither he or Zach Bogosian could complete a pass.
Bogosian made a brilliant pass to Marner right before he danced around Logan Stanley. Then on his next shift he found himself with the puck on his stick in the slot and forgot to shoot. Oh well, what else do you want from your bottom pair?
Coaching Staff — Everyone’s frustrated with the powerplay, and understandably so, but I wanted to give Sheldon Keefe & Co. some credit for actually trying some logical changes to the power play. As I mentioned earlier, Toronto top-loaded PP1 in this game, putting their star forwards on the top unit.
Later in the game, when Marner and Matthews had a bit of trouble on the entries, they tried Spezza on the half-wall instead of Nylander, presumably to help the unit gain the zone – and have more of a shot threat from the left dot.
Did any of it work? No, but I’d encourage the coaching staff to keep trying new things. We don’t see enough of it in this super conservative sport.
Jake Muzzin (LD, #8) — I thought he was Toronto’s most consistent defenseman tonight, which isn’t saying too much. All six of the D when through some ups and downs on Wednesday, although Muzzin was the most stable at defending the blue line against Winnipeg’s dynamic forwards.
2 Stars
Justin Holl (RD, #3) — The pairing as a whole played alright, but again, I’d argue Muzzin was more responsible for that. Holl had a couple of rough passes in his own zone, although he did make a nice few plays with the puck on his stick.
My favourite was the smart turnback he made at the end of his shift later in the third period, understanding that his team had the lead and they didn’t need to force anything up the ice. I know the old-school types hate those turnbacks, but if you can maintain possession while your linemates change, you should do it every time. The other team can’t score if you have the puck.
Pierre Engvall (C, #47) — His inability to complete a pass off the rush was frustrating to watch tonight, especially considering how much speed he’s able to build up when he gets those legs churning in transition. Defensively, he was very solid once again, which is really why you want him out there. I’d just like to see him make more plays after stepping over the blue line.
Joe Thornton (LW, #97) — Does anyone in the NHL need a night off more than Joe Thornton? Carter Hart maybe? Taylor Hall? It’s a short list.
Jumbo Joe had a few decent moments against the Jets, mostly stick checks defensively along the boards. I’m a big fan of his upside as a passer in Keefe’s system, but if you look at his play over the last couple weeks, he’s dropped off considerably since the start of the season.
Brandon Pridham needs to accrue all the cap space he can muster, so maybe Thornton will have to wait until after the April 12th trade deadline before he gets a night off. I just feel bad for the 41-year-old veteran. He looks like he could use some rest.
1 Star
The Rielly-Brodie Pair — This wasn’t their night. Morgan Rielly and TJ Brodie spent the majority of their shifts stuck in their own end. Most of that was self-inflicted; they were turning pucks over on the breakout, which isn’t like them. Brodie, in particular, was really struggling in this game, although he did make a few nice defensive plays to prevent backdoor passes.
Heat Map
Here’s a quick look at where each team’s shots were coming from at even strength, courtesy of Natural Stat Trick.
The shots were even at 5v5, but Toronto dominated in the shot quality department, controlling 63 percent of chances from the slot and 73 percent of the expected goals.
Game Score
Game score is a metric developed by The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn to measure single-game performance. You can read more about it here.
Tweets of the Night
The Leafs defending leads from the past four years. A giant improvement this season. pic.twitter.com/OKoTRm3RuR
Red = lots of shots from that location, Blue = not many.
This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. Despite their reputation, Toronto has actually reduced chances against by a significant margin when they’re holding those dreaded one-goal leads in the 3rd period.
These aren’t the Leafs of years past.
Imagine telling someone a couple years ago the Leafs would be rolling out a PP unit of Spezza-Thornton-Simmonds-Galchenyuk-Brodie
Christine Sinclair scored one final goal at B.C. Place, helping the Portland Thorns to a 6-0 victory over the Whitecaps Girls Elite team. The soccer legend has announced she’ll retire from professional soccer at the end of the National Women’s Soccer League season. (Oct. 16, 2024)
At his first news conference as England’s newly appointed head coach, Thomas Tuchel – a German – was asked on Wednesday what message he had for fans who would have preferred an Englishman in charge of their beloved national team.
“I’m sorry, I just have a German passport,” he said, laughing, and went on to profess his love for English football and the country itself. “I will do everything to show respect to this role and to this country.”
The soccer rivalry between England and Germany runs deep and it’s likely Tuchel’s passport will be used against him if he doesn’t deliver results for a nation that hasn’t lifted a men’s trophy since 1966. But his appointment as England’s third foreign coach shows that, increasingly, even the top countries in the sport are abandoning the long-held belief that the national team must be led by one of their own.
Four of the top nine teams in the FIFA world rankings now have foreign coaches. Even in Germany, a four-time World Cup winner which has never had a foreign coach, candidates such as Dutchman Louis van Gaal and Austrian Oliver Glasner were considered serious contenders for the top job before the country’s soccer federation last year settled on Julian Nagelsmann, who is German.
“The coaching methods are universal and there for everyone to apply,” said German soccer researcher and authorChristoph Wagner, whose recent book “Crossing the Line?” historically addresses Anglo-German rivalry. “It’s more the personality that counts and not the nationality. You could be a great coach, and work with a group of players who aren’t perceptive enough to get your methods.”
Not everyone agrees.
English soccer author and journalist Jonathan Wilson said it was “an admission of failure” for a major soccer nation to have a coach from a different country.
“Personally, I think it should be the best of one country versus the best of another country, and that would probably extend to coaches as well as players,” said Wilson, whose books include “Inverting The Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics.”
“To say we can’t find anyone in our country who is good enough to coach our players,” he said, “I think there is something slightly embarrassing, slightly distasteful about that.”
That sentiment was echoed by British tabloid The Daily Mail, which reported on Tuchel’s appointment with the provocative headline “A Dark Day for England.”
While foreign coaches are often found in smaller countries and those further down the world rankings, they are still a rarity among the traditional powers of the game. Italy, another four-time world champion, has only had Italians in charge. All of Spain’s coaches in its modern-day history have been Spanish nationals. Five-time World Cup winner Brazil has had only Brazilians in charge since 1965, and two-time world champion France only Frenchmen since 1975.
And it remains the case that every World Cup-winning team, since the first tournament in 1930, has been coached by a native of that country. The situation is similar for the women’s World Cup, which has never been won by a team with a foreign coach, though Jill Ellis, who led the U.S. to two trophies, is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in England.
Some coaches have made a career out of jumping from one national team to the next. Lars Lagerbäck, 76, coached his native Sweden between 2000-09 and went on to lead the national teams of Nigeria, Iceland and Norway.
“I couldn’t say I felt any big difference,” Lagerbäck told The Associated Press. “I felt they were my teams and the people’s teams.”
For Lagerbäck, the obvious disadvantages of coaching a foreign country were any language difficulties and having to adapt to a new culture, which he particularly felt during his brief time with Nigeria in 2010 when he led the African country at the World Cup.
Otherwise, he said, “it depends on the results” — and Lagerbäck is remembered with fondness in Iceland, especially, after leading the country to Euro 2016 for its first ever international tournament, where it knocked out England in the round of 16.
Lagerbäck pointed to the strong education and sheer number of coaches available in soccer powers like Spain and Italy to explain why they haven’t needed to turn to an overseas coach. At this year’s European Championship, five of the coaches were from Italy and the winning coach was Luis de la Fuente, who was promoted to Spain’s senior team after being in charge of the youth teams.
Portugal for the first time looked outside its own borders or Brazil, with which it has historical ties, when it appointed Spaniard Roberto Martinez as national team coach last year. Also last year, Brazil tried — and ultimately failed — to court Real Madrid’s Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti, with Brazilian soccer federation president Ednaldo Rodrigues saying: “It doesn’t matter if it’s a foreigner or a Brazilian, there’s no prejudice about the nationality.”
The United States has had a long list of foreign coaches before Mauricio Pochettino, the Argentine former Chelsea manager who took over as the men’s head coach this year.
The English Football Association certainly had no qualms making Tuchel the national team’s third foreign-born coach, after Swede Sven-Goran Eriksson (2001-06) and Italian Fabio Capello (2008-12), simply believing he was the best available coach on the market.
Unlike Eriksson and Capello, Tuchel at least had previous experience of working in English soccer — he won the Champions League in an 18-month spell with Chelsea — and he also speaks better English.
That won’t satisfy all the nay-sayers, though.
“Hopefully I can convince them and show them and prove to them that I’m proud to be the English manager,” Tuchel said.
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AP Sports Writer Jerome Pugmire in Paris contributed to this story.
TORONTO – Bobby McMann watched from the press box on opening night.
Just over a week later, the Maple Leafs winger took a twirl as the first star.
McMann went from healthy scratch to unlikely offensive focal point in just eight days, putting up two goals in Toronto’s 6-2 victory over the Los Angeles Kings on Wednesday.
The odd man out at the Bell Centre against the Montreal Canadiens, he’s slowly earning the trust of first-year head coach Craig Berube.
“There’s a lot of good players on this team,” McMann said of his reaction to sitting out Game 1. “Maybe some guys fit better in certain scenarios than others … just knowing that my opportunity would come.”
The Wainwright, Alta., product skated on the second line with William Nylander and Max Domi against Los Angeles, finishing with those two goals, three hits and a plus-3 rating in just over 14 minutes of work.
“He’s been unbelievable,” said Nylander, who’s tied with McMann for the team lead with three goals. “It’s great when a player like that comes in.”
The 28-year-old burst onto the scene last February when he went from projected scratch to hat-trick hero in a single day after then-captain John Tavares fell ill.
McMann would finish 2023-24 with 15 goals and 24 points in 56 games before a knee injury ruled him out of Toronto’s first-round playoff loss to the Boston Bruins.
“Any time you have success, it helps the confidence,” he said. “But I always trust the abilities and trust that they’re there whether things are going in or (I’m not) getting points. Just trying to play my game and trust that doing the little things right will pay off.”
McMann was among the Leafs’ best players against the Kings — and not just because of what he did on the scoresheet. The forward got into a scuffle with Phillip Danault in the second period before crushing Mikey Anderson with a clean hit in the third.
“He’s a power forward,” Berube said. “That’s how he should think the game, night in and night out, as being a power forward with his skating and his size. He doesn’t have to complicate the game.”
Leafs goaltender Anthony Stolarz knew nothing about McMann before joining Toronto in free agency over the summer.
“Great two-way player,” said the netminder. “Extremely physical and moves really well, has a good shot. He’s a key player for us in our depth. I was really happy for him to get those two goals.
“Works his butt off.”
ON TARGET
Leafs captain Auston Matthews, who scored 69 times last season, ripped his first goal of 2024-25 after going without a point through the first three games.
“It’s not going to go in every night,” said Matthews, who added two assists against the Kings. “It’s good to see one fall … a little bit of the weight lifted off your shoulders.”
WAKE-UP CALL
Berube was animated on the bench during a third-period timeout after the Kings cut a 5-0 deficit to 5-2.
“Taking care of the puck, being harder in our zone,” Matthews said of the message. “There were times in the game, early in the second, in the third period, where the momentum shifted and we needed to grab it back.”
PATCHES SITS
Toronto winger Max Pacioretty was a healthy scratch after dressing the first three games.
“There’s no message,” Berube said of the 35-year-old’s omission. “We have extra players and not everybody can play every night. That’s the bottom line. He’s been fine when he’s played, but I’ve got to make decisions as a coach, and I’m going to make those decisions — what I think is best for the team.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
