In the recent era of Toronto Maple Leafs hockey, the team has a reputation for being a run-and-gun operation that wins with high-end offensive weapons and loses thanks to defensive lapses.
The validity of that reputation has varied over the years, but in the last couple of seasons the Maple Leafs have quietly become an effective defensive team, ranking as a top-10 shot-suppression squad in 2021-22 and 2022-23.
While Toronto has allowed a reasonable 29 shots per game early in the 2023-24 season, it has conceded at least four goals in each contest. Only two teams have allowed more goals than the Maple Leafs (13), while no one has scored more (14).
This return to stereotypical form can be partially traced to the .860 save percentage the team has gotten from its goaltenders, but some of it is the foreseeable result of conscious team-building efforts.
Most of the headlines around Brad Treliving’s first offseason as Maple Leafs general manager surrounded the sandpaper he hoped to bring to the squad with players like Ryan Reaves, Tyler Bertuzzi, and Max Domi, but his actions spoke louder than quotations that used the word “snot” with unprecedented frequency.
Treliving’s most expensive additions — Bertuzzi ($5.50M AAV), John Klingberg ($4.15M AAV) and Domi ($3M AAV) — all spoke to a desire to beef up the team’s secondary scoring, putting less pressure on the top of the lineup.
Although that was a sensible goal, it led Treliving to acquire guys whose offensive skills came with warts.
Bertuzzi plays out of control at times, Klingberg’s lack of defensive acumen is well-documented, and Domi has never been a two-way force. Importing these guys always seemed likely to make things more exciting for the Maple Leafs at both ends of the ice, and that’s been the case so far.
Monday’s 4-1 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks provided a perfect example of the type of chaotic contributions the new guys can bring on a nightly basis — particularly Bertuzzi and Klingberg. Domi played a quiet game, as has been his pattern since joining the Maple Leafs.
Bertuzzi has a bull-in-a-china-shop energy that makes for compelling viewing regardless of his effectiveness, and his game consistently jumped off the screen against Chicago.
Sometimes that took the form of benign-but-peculiar moments like this attempt at a puck retrieval that resulted in defending forward Jason Dickinson (#16) hitting the deck.
Sometimes his relentlessness resulted in masterful moments on the forecheck that created opportunities for his teammates.
His combination of work ethic and nifty hands is rare and helps him keep the pressure on in the offensive zone.
At the same time, Bertuzzi’s seemingly endless energy isn’t always channeled in a productive way.
On Monday, there’s a case to be made that the winger was one of Toronto’s best players. He ranked second on the team in 5-on-5 ice time (16:49) and the Maple Leafs had a 73.26% expected goal share with Bertuzzi on the ice, outshooting the Blackhawks 12-5 along the way.
Unfortunately for the Maple Leafs, Bertuzzi also took two needless penalties outside of the defensive zone — one of them a particularly egregious high-sticking call that led to the Blackhawks grabbing a 3-1 lead that gave them control of the game.
Bertuzzi has five minor penalties already this season, nearly half of Toronto’s total (11).
To be fair to the 28-year-old, senseless trips to the sin bin haven’t traditionally been as big a part of his game as they have been lately. He’s never topped 47 penalty minutes in a season but he’s always a threat to mix things up, for better or for worse.
Klingberg’s game is similar to Bertuzzi’s in that he’s often doing something notable, but it’s tough to predict which team will be helped by it.
The defenseman can’t claim to have had as strong a game as Bertuzzi on Monday considering his expected goal rate at 5-on-5 was an ugly 42.78% — and he was demoted to the team’s third pair in the third period — but he had a similarly anarchic effect on the game.
As tough as his day was, there’s an argument to be made that Klingberg made the two best passes completed by the Maple Leafs on the night. One of them would’ve been buried by William Nylander in most cases…
… the other likely would’ve found the net if a more gifted offensive player than Jake McCabe had been on the other end:
He also pulled off one of the most creative feeds of the game by drawing the puck away from Boris Katchouk and feeding it through the forward’s legs.
At the same time, Klingberg was a clear defensive minus all night.
The Blackhawks outshot the Maple Leafs 13-5 when has was on the ice at 5-on-5, and the 31-year-old authored some unmissable defensive blunders — like this sequence where he completely missed the puck on a tough bounce, letting it go through his legs in front of the net…
… or this clearing attempt that wasn’t even close to Mitch Marner and ended up looking like a crisp pass to the Blackhawks.
His most notable defensive whiff came against Connor Bedard as he lost the rookie in the neutral zone.
Klingberg is an offense-first defenseman who creates most of that offense by generating opportunities for others. When those chances don’t get buried, his game can look ugly— and it certainly did on Monday.
As bad as things got for the Maple Leafs in that game, some of the things they’re seeing from their new players are issues that could get cleaned up in the weeks to come.
Bertuzzi isn’t likely to be a penalty machine for long. It’s possible Klingberg is able to mesh with McCabe (or Mark Giordano) with more minutes under his belt and do a better job of keeping his head above water defensively. The jury is out on Domi until he settles into a consistent role, but the team is likely to get more from him going forward.
What isn’t going to change is the fact that the Maple Leafs have introduced some unpredictable elements into the mix, and will live with the consequences all season. We won’t know how the contributions of guys like Bertuzzi and Klingberg will net out until the season is over, but it’s already clear they’re changing the composition of this team.
Early in their 2023-24 campaign, the Maple Leafs are playing a combustible high-event brand of hockey. While that doesn’t tend to be a coach’s dream, it’s a fairly predictable outcome when you add a batch of players that are better at wreaking havoc than playing in structure.
