As we near the halfway point in the season, coaches have had a chance to gauge how their team is performing and while some have already made some significant roster changes, others are currently pondering how they can optimize their current lineups. The Leafs are among the teams who are considering some changes, namely in how they deploy their lines.
In their game against the New York Islanders last night, the Toronto Maple Leafs used their bottom-six a lot more than they have in the past as the Islanders matched their fourth line against the Auston Matthews' line. It forced Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe to rely on the third and fourth lines more and, following the game, he had some high praise for their efforts recently.
The Islanders are notorious for playing their fourth line as much as their first line some nights, but as Keefe said, having a bottom-six you can trust to throw on the ice at any point in time is something the Leafs have not had in a long-time. There have been certain players in the bottom-six that Keefe has relied on more, but never really a full line, even dating back to November and December, when Keefe would often dress Ryan Reaves just to play him for 6 or 7 minutes and then allow some of the team's stars to take on extra shifts on the 4th line.
We'll see what the more immediate future holds for the Leafs as they have a back-to-back against Colorado and Detroit this weekend. It will be interesting to see whether Keefe continues to rely on his 3rd and 4th lines or if he goes back to running Matthews and Marner until the wheels fall off, leaving them gassed late in games.
