Previously, I wrote about three reasons that the Toronto Maple Leafs fanbase should be optimistic about the team and their expectations for the 2024-25 season. On the other side of things, there are some changes happening in the Queen City that leave a bit of a sour taste in my mouth in this regard — not to say that there shouldn’t be optimism, but there are a few reasons to temper expectations and perhaps be weary of considering the team a true Stanley Cup contender. Let’s get into them below:
1. Craig Berube
Perhaps the most influential move of general manager (GM) Brad Treliving’s offseason could be what holds them back the most from success. After Sheldon Keefe was fired as head coach in early May, the Toronto front office spent about three weeks filtering through new candidates before settling on hiring Craig Berube.
Let’s get one thing straight — the fact that Berube has won a Cup in the past doesn’t mean much. There’s no denying that the St. Louis Blues had a magnificent turnaround in the back half of the 2018-19 regular season once Berube was hired, but we can’t pretend that Vezina-caliber goaltending from one-year-wonder Jordan Binnington didn’t play a bigger part than the team around him elevating their play. He finished fifth in Vezina Trophy voting and 10th in Hart Trophy voting despite playing in just 32 games, posting an incredible 1.87 goals-against average (GAA) and .927 save percentage (SV%), showing the weight that he had in carrying the Blues to the postseason. From there, they continued their momentum and relied on a collapse from the Boston Bruins, whose three best players struggled to produce much of anything when it really mattered.
Beyond his Cup-winning season as head coach, Berube’s Blues fell off the face of the earth post-victory. In 2019-20, the Blues were a middling team in terms of expected goal share (xGF%), and from 2020-21 until the time he got canned as head coach, his teams enjoyed bottom-20 finishes in every season. Unsurprisingly, in this five-year span, they won one total playoff round and missed the playoffs altogether twice. For added context, three of the top five teams in the NHL in the 2023-24 season in terms of xGF% advanced to the conference finals, and seven of the eight best teams in the first round of the playoffs in that metric advanced to the second round. There’s a clear correlation between a high xGF% and playoff success.
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Historically, Berube doesn’t do very well with skilled players. Think about the Cup-winning team — their best performers, Ryan O’Reilly, Brayden Schenn, David Perron, and Alex Pietrangelo are far from skill-first players and instead employ a grittier style of hockey contingent on winning board battles and physicality. Unshockingly, no player on that roster scored at a point-per-game pace, either. Flash forward to his team now, and there really couldn’t be a more polar opposite fit. Instead of the deep Blues team that had 14 forwards score 20 or more points while no player surpassed a point per game, the Maple Leafs are top-heavy and skillful, with three players far-surpassing the point-per-game mark but just 10 players topping 20.
Not only that, but they have a more finesse-focused roster up and down the lineup. Auston Matthews and John Tavares can be gritty at times, but it isn’t a regular part of their game, and other superstars Mitch Marner and William Nylander rely completely on their skill and finesse toolkit. Berube’s most recent Blues team was more akin to this, with players such as Jordan Kyrou, Robert Thomas, and Pavel Buchnevich leading the charge. They couldn’t muster up much of anything in the regular season and yet again fell short of the playoffs despite going 30-19-5 after the coaching change. All in all, on paper he’s just not a great fit for the complexion of the Maple Leafs roster.
2. Aging Curves
It’s been apparent for years that now ex-captain Tavares has been on the decline. When he first joined the Maple Leafs in 2018-19, he was a perennial point-per-game-plus player with leadership expertise and solid two-way abilities that few in the league could match. If he wasn’t attached to star players in Matthews, Marner, and Nylander, it’s hard for me to imagine a world in which Tavares would produce even three-quarters of the points he’s put up over the past couple of seasons. Looking at his micro-statistics, there are some concerning trends to keep an eye on in the upcoming season:
As you can see above, the macro-impacts are certainly there — he’s among the league’s best in terms of general offensive impact at even strength and the power play, but there are some concerningly average (and below average) micro-metrics. He’s completely inept in transition, struggling to both enter the offensive zone and exit the defensive zone with the puck on his stick. Whereas he used to be a threat from both off the rush and in a cycle-style offence, his rush game has completely fallen off and he struggles to produce much of anything from it. His passing skill has dropped off, sitting below league-average in primary shot assists, passes to high-danger areas, and chance assists and barely above league-average in primary assists per 60 minutes and in-zone shot assists. His skating speed, at 33 years old, is unsurprisingly below average. The only facets of his game that are palatable and unlikely to change much are his shooting habits and tendency to involve himself in board battles.
Beyond Tavares, who is undoubtedly slowing down, the Maple Leafs’ two most potent offseason additions on defence, Chris Tanev and Oliver Ekman-Larsson, are reaching an age at which they could also be slowing down. Ekman-Larsson is the younger of the two at 33 and his style of hockey is less likely to have a steep dropoff, so he’s naturally less of a concern in that regard, but Tanev, 35, could slow down rapidly considering the prominent role he’s likely stepping into. With the Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames, he was usually on the second pairing. With the Dallas Stars last season, he was in the same boat. This season, however, he projects as a top-pairing defenceman alongside star puck-mover Morgan Rielly.
I don’t think it’s as much of a concern in 2024-25, but past this season there’s real reason for worry from the wear and tear of competing against the opposition’s best on a nightly basis. He’ll likely be playing more than he ever has — and against more difficult competition — and could even feel the repercussions of that by the back-half of this coming regular season. 35 isn’t young, and that’s usually the age at which defensive defencemen begin to lose their lustre and get relegated to a bottom-four role.
3. The Fourth Line
There’s no denying the talent of the Maple Leafs’ top six. Between the generational goal-scorer in Matthews, superstars Marner and Nylander, and veteran Tavares, there’s no worrying about a lack of production from the team’s best forwards (outside of Tavares’ potential and probable decline). Even the third line should be a force to be reckoned with considering breakout candidates Nick Robertson, Bobby McMann, and Matthew Knies. The fourth line, however, leaves quite a bit to be desired.
Regardless of one’s thoughts about the efficacy of grittiness and physicality in hockey, it’s hard to deny that Ryan Reaves simply isn’t a good hockey player. Yes, he’s able to drop the mitts well, but if that’s literally all he provides to the team, there are very few occasions in which he’ll find himself useful for the season. He’s gone five straight seasons with an xGF% of below 50%, meaning that the Maple Leafs are largely getting caved in in terms of puck possession and chance generation when he’s on the ice. Sure, he can throw checks, but if that comes at the expense of getting scored on, is it really worth it?
It doesn’t get much better down the middle for the fourth line, with bar-none the Maple Leafs’ worst contract playing alongside Reaves at the fourth-line center position. David Kampf, who is signed at $2.4 million annually through the 2026-27 season, has been just about the worst member of the Toronto roster since joining the squad in 2021-22. He ended the 2023-24 season with an astoundingly low xGF% of 43.17%, solely bettering now-Ottawa Senator Noah Gregor. He lowered his game even more in the postseason, getting absolutely shelled to the tune of an xGF% of 30.45%.
The third member of the fourth line — presumably Connor Dewar — is the least offensive but still has glaring red flags. For one, he was the only player to sport an xGF% lower than Kampf in the playoffs, sitting at an impressively unimpressive 30.30%. The flip side to that, though, is that he held it together during the regular season, ending the year at a positive 51.25%. He’s a viable addition to the penalty kill, but let’s hope he irons out the kinks that he showed in postseason hockey alongside Kampf and Reaves.
At best, the Maple Leafs’ fourth line is a net-neutral entity that neither provides nor allows much offence on either side of the ice. At worst, they’re outright atrocious, allowing chances left and right while providing little to no offence in exchange. It’s such a shame that a team with so much talent and potential in the top nine is left with scraps in the bottom line — even if they play for less than ten minutes a night, that’s up to a sixth of a hockey game clenching your jaw in hopes that they don’t get scored on.
2024-25 Should Still Be Exciting
Don’t get it twisted — the Maple Leafs are a better team on paper than they were in 2023-24. Between the much-improved defensive roster, added depth talent from youngsters, and increased chance of stability in net between Joseph Woll and Anthony Stolarz, it’s an exciting time to be a Toronto fan. Still, it’s important to recognize the potential shortcomings of a team that hasn’t gone past the second round of the playoffs since 2002 and manage expectations accordingly.
