All eyes on Toronto’s second line – TSN.ca

What will the second line look like in Toronto this season?

That’s one of the more intriguing questions facing a potential Stanley Cup team this season. The Maple Leafs’ lineup is deep and talented, and barring a goaltender flameout – which must be acknowledged as a real risk at this point – they should head into the postseason. There’s just too much scoring firepower throughout the roster for them to overlook. That result would be consistent with what we’ve seen in recent years, where the Maple Leafs have accumulated more points than any team not playing in Colorado, Boston, Florida or Carolina.

But their line combinations and general bet have yet to be sorted out. We’re confident head coach Sheldon Keefe will play regularly Michael Bunt and Mitch Marner with Austin Matthews on the top line, and why shouldn’t he? It’s an impressive combination of agility, playmaking and foresight on the wings of what is perhaps the best shooter in the league. Few lines have outperformed the Matthews group over the years, and Toronto clearly has something that’s working here.

Behind them, John Tavares will play in the middle but the wings are a question mark. William Nylanderalex kerfoot, Calle JarnkrokNick Robertson and Pierre Engvall are all plausible names. Which two make the most sense remains a debate.

Count me with someone who thinks Toronto will turn to a proven unit early in the year, with Nylander and Kerfoot on Tavares’ wing. There was a bit of backlash against correcting that line, in part because it means Toronto has a lineup that looks strikingly similar to the one disappointed in playoff time.

But it’s also hard to walk away from this group. Among other things, it would be very difficult to put one of the team’s most prolific forwards, Nylander, on a third line. And despite inconsistent play, the broader group (including Kerfoot) has produced.

What is the statistical argument? Consider the last three seasons of equal strength in Toronto, where we’ve seen this trio play more than 700 minutes together. There have been disappointing stretches but by and large they outperform their competition when together.

The cool thing is that we can look at every possible combination Toronto tried with this group and see where performance issues manifested themselves. Here’s the data:

If you look at the trio, who have played more than 700 minutes together, they own about 53 percent of the goal share and their underlying measures of territorial control – whether you’re using shots or shots adjusted for quality (expected goals) – are in a line . This is a strong indication that their goal advantage was built through game control, which is usually a reliable indicator of future results.

If we want to see which straw stirs the drink, we can isolate a number of different player combinations to see what worked and what didn’t. For example: the combination of Tavares and Kerfoot without Nylander outperformed the combination of Tavares and Nylander without Kerfoot. It’s in less overall time, about 400 minutes of action, but this tandem played well together. And although we consider Nylander to be one of the team’s best wingers and much more anchored in the second row than Kerfoot, it’s Kerfoot who has had better relative results with Tavares so far.

Less surprising is the fact that Nylander and Kerfoot are the only weak group when playing without Tavares. This is based on 300 minutes of action, a relatively smaller sample size, but it is in line with our expectations – weaker centers further down the lineup are doing less for Kerfoot and Nylander than Tavares and consequently the results suffer.
Toronto have plenty of opportunities here, and if they want to smooth out their lines a bit and edge out some third-row talent, we could see someone – probably Kerfoot – shuffle the lineup down. But despite the occasional dismay at this group, it’s important to step back and acknowledge that they’ve generally done their job.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement or that another combination can’t beat this group already next season. But it means the bar should be high for Keefe and the coaching staff if one decides to change that line-up and it will take some impressive work in training camp and pre-season from one of the bottom six wingers to crack that second line of the team.

Data on Natural Stat Trick, Evolving Hockey, NHL.com, Hockey Reference