The Intriguing Eight

Is it premature to start planning for the NHL, and the wider world of sports, to return here in the not so distant future?

Maybe.



But I say we’ve all earned the right to some optimism.

If the NHL season does come back in some fashion, we’ll get another look at what a Leafs team — inconsistent over 70 games — has to offer. Just as curious will be the contributions of these eight individuals, including one player who’s yet to even play a game for the Leafs.

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William Nylander

One overlooked element of Nylander’s breakout season was how much more he was playing — a career high of more than 18 minutes a game, including 14 nights of 20 minutes or more.

Nylander produced about the same number of points per 60 minutes 5-on-5 this year (2.3) as he did during the 2017-18 season (2.4). He was just playing more this season — and shooting and scoring a lot more with that extra opportunity. From Dec. 20 onward, Nylander landed among the top 10 in the league with 20 goals over a 33-game stretch. He shot a blistering 19 percent.
He did most of that damage alongside John Tavares, at left wing for the very first time in his NHL career, and with a newfound habit of attacking the net. He was also a force in similar quarters around the net with first-time opportunity in the bumper spot on the Leafs’ top power-play unit. He matched a career high with nine power-play goals with 12 games theoretically still left to play.
That Nylander will demand viewing when the season returns.
How might a stronger, more experienced Nylander (turning 24 later this week) look in a postseason series (assuming the Leafs make whatever playoff format the NHL decides on), particularly with all those extra minutes?
Remember, Nylander, mostly lined up as the Leafs’ third centre in last year’s playoffs, and was joined primarily by a pair of worker bees — Patrick Marleau and Connor Brown — who weren’t bringing much spice to the offensive table. Nylander, too, was coming off a sluggish regular season following a months-long contract standoff. He averaged less than 16 minutes a game against Boston, and in Games 2 and 3, played less than 14 minutes.
He scored only once in the seven-game series and was held without a shot in Game 7.
That’s not the Nylander we’ve come to know now. What kind of pressure does model 2.0 put on opponents in a playoff series?
Sheldon Keefe will have an interesting choice when it comes to Nylander’s placement in the lineup upon the season returning: Does he reconnect Nylander with Tavares, with whom he spent much of the second half, or return him to Auston Matthews’ side?

Justin Holl

Only three of Toronto’s regulars will head into the postseason with no NHL playoff experience: Holl, Mikheyev, and Pierre Engvall. (Rasmus Sandin could conceivably play at some point too, though likely not right away.)
Sure, Holl and Engvall were key players on the Marlies 2018 Calder Cup team, and Mikheyev went deep with Omsk Avangard in the 2019 KHL playoffs. But the NHL in the playoffs is a whole different animal. And the step up feels especially large for Holl, given how crucial a role he plays as one half of the Leafs shutdown pair.
Though he’s been in the NHL now for two seasons, only now has Holl put together the equivalent of one full NHL season. He’s up to 81 games played. About half of those games — since early December onward — have come with the 28-year-old contesting top lines, primarily alongside Jake Muzzin.

Not only were Holl and Muzzin eating up the most rigorous of minutes, they were doing it with the most success of any of Toronto’s pairings.
But while Muzzin has done that kind of heavy lifting in the NHL playoffs previously, including last spring beside Nikita Zaitsev, and more notably in 2014 during the L.A. Kings’ Stanley Cup run, Holl will be doing it for the first time.
How will he respond to that challenge under the most tense, pressure-packed terrain of his hockey career?
“Every night, you go down the list,” Holl said at one point of the difficulties the role posed during regular season play. “You’re like, OK, we’re playing Crosby tonight. OK, we’re playing Crosby again. Then, we’re playing Aho and Teravainen, and you go down the list. There’s really no rest.”

Ilya Mikheyev

Keefe was anxiously awaiting his return before the season stopped.
And it was pretty obvious why: Mikheyev was the missing piece up front, the ideal winger to join Matthews, Tavares, Marner, Nylander, and Zach Hyman in rounding out the top six. For the nearly three months Mikheyev was out, Keefe was forced mostly to use Alexander Kerfoot as forward No. 6, which had a not-so-great (if unavoidable) trickle down effect on the rest of the lineup.
In the final game before the pause, Denis Malgin was lining up beside Nylander and Tavares.
Mikheyev returning solves that problem.
The Russian stopped playing like a rookie in the weeks before his wrist was sliced by the skate of Jesper Bratt in late December. He’d become heavy, and yet, quick-moving in a way that was reminiscent of Hyman. He’d shown a knack for chasing down pucks and making life easier on his linemates as a result that was similar, too. Mikheyev had become tough — at 6-foot-3, nearly 200 pounds — for opponents to handle and looked like a lock to play with either Tavares or Matthews in the second half.


The heavier game Mikheyev is capable of seemed to mesh well with the Leafs captain. Add one of Nylander or Marner to the line and the Leafs have not one but two units — a Matthews-led contingent being the other — ready to go head-to-head against any trio.
(With the way he gets up and down the ice, Mikheyev would fit just as well with Matthews. Those two have seen only 32 minutes together 5-on-5.)
Mikheyev’s return, mind you, also pushes Kerfoot down the lineup, to the third centre spot where he’s needed. That deepens a lineup that will remain without Andreas Johnsson (knee surgery) until next season.
Mikheyev is coming off a serious injury himself, and it’s possible he’s not quite right when things finally do return. He will have also gone a long time without playing games — about four months at the time of this writing. The rust factor, however, might be minimized by the fact that every other player in the league has now been sitting and waiting a good chunk, too.
Looming in the backdrop of everything is the next contract Mikheyev is eyeing.
Add a sturdy postseason to a very limited regular season resume (39 games) and Mikheyev will only feel more crucial to the Leafs long-term puzzle. And that will make the prospects for his second contract a lot more interesting in light of the likely cap squeeze the Leafs will be facing.

Morgan Rielly

It’s possible that Rielly has been truly healthy for only one game this season.
It was March 10, when the 26-year-old returned from a broken left foot in the Leafs’ final game before the pause. He played a solid 22 minutes in a 2-1 win over Tampa.
At the end of 2019 and early 2020, Rielly declined to reveal how long he had been playing through a lower-body ailment. But based on the limited range of his movements even in October — the lack of his usual burst and lateral movement — it seems entirely possible that it was bugging him from the start. Maybe even as far back as training camp in Newfoundland or some point in the preseason.
Which means when the season returns the Leafs will likely be getting the best version of Rielly — and one that’s fully optimized.

We saw a brief preview of what that optimization might look like in Rielly’s return. He was back alongside Cody Ceci that night, his partner to begin the regular season. But unlike those early days of the season, Keefe didn’t use Rielly and Ceci against the toughest opponents. He went with Holl and Travis Dermott (it’ll be Muzzin when he’s healthy) instead. That left Rielly with more opportunity to do what he does best: drive offence.

Young Nick

Nick Robertson

We’re going off the board a bit here, but I do wonder if the Leafs will be tempted to give Nick Robertson a look when the season comes back.
What might hold them back?
Well, for one, Robertson is only 18 and hasn’t even played in an NHL preseason game, let alone NHL action in weird circumstances after a global pandemic. Thrusting him onto that stage — for the Leafs, in Toronto — would be a lot to ask. That, and burning one year of his entry-level contract (if he plays 10 games) for whatever this season amounts to might not be so appealing to a front office that needs to value every future cap dollar.

Frederik Andersen

There’s arguably no one on the Leafs with more to gain from the NHL returning than Andersen. No one has, or needs, the opportunity more to alter the narrative of the regular season.
Though the 30-year-old was turning things around before the pause, an underwhelming regular season to that point (.909 save percentage), along with the pending expiration of his contract in 2021, has put Andersen’s long-term future with the organization   — at least from outside the organization.
A good-to-great performance when the season resumes would dull concerns and reinforce his status as Toronto’s cornerstone in goal. It might even make a contract extension after the season more palatable.
What’s interesting, the more you dig, is that Andersen’s playoff resume is a little rosier than it’s appeared on first or even second glance. Zero-in on the 5-on-5 play and Andersen has actually been the better goalie in all three playoff series for the Leafs.

Ol" Crazy Eyes Tucker ,for fun

Tyson Barrie

Second to Andersen in the change-the-narrative rankings, Barrie logged his second-fewest minutes (under 16) of the season in the last game before the pause. It’s possible, maybe even likely, that his role continues to contract when the season resumes.
Still, perhaps Barrie can be for the Leafs what Fred VanVleet was for the Raptors during their title run — a more than occasional spark off the bench. Pop Barrie out for as many 5-on-5 offensive zone draws as possible, let him go to work on the power play, and maybe the 28-year-old can bring some instant offence. Those smaller doses of Barrie might not be what the Leafs had in mind when they sprung for the pending UFA in a trade for Kadri last summer, but it can still be useful.
And Barrie remains a potent offensive driver.
He produced 1.2 points per 60 5-on-5 this season, which is about what he averaged in the three seasons previous combined, and still a top-30 mark leaguewide among NHL defencemen.
Barrie had an impactful playoffs with the Avalanche last season, with eight points in 12 games (none in the final five games, however) while soaking up a team-leading 24 minutes a night. It’s unlikely he plays so prominent a role with the Leafs when things resume, though if Holl or Ceci prove overwhelmed, Barrie could end up emerging higher in the lineup.
Make a splash after the season returns and Barrie will boost free agent value that figures to be hurt by the stalled season and a year, personally, that fell below expectations. Maybe there’s even a world  where he comes back to the Leafs.

Leaf it Be

 

Auston Matthews

Like Nylander, what’s so appealing about getting another look at Matthews after the NHL returns is what the latest model of him looks like in a playoff series. It’s the same thing with Marner, too.
Young players still on the uptick, still adding tools to the arsenal.
With Matthews — still only 22 by the way — it’s a growing two-way game and introduction this season of a devastating one-timer. What kind of destruction does that reap in a playoff matchup, particularly if the Leafs can make Barrie more of a shooting threat on the opposite side of the power play? We might see what Matthews as very possibly the best player in a series looks like. We got glimpses of that last spring when he burned the Bruins with five goals in seven games.
Since then, Matthews — on a 55-goal pace — has climbed another rung on the ladder, though.
It’s also a certainty that with Keefe running the bench, Matthews will play a lot more than he did in 2019 — just under 20 minutes per game. Matthews was sixth among NHL centres in ice time after Keefe became Leafs coach, at 21 and a half minutes a night.
You can bet he plays at least that much night after night after the long layoff.